I 

I 



FOREGLEAMS AND FoRESHADOWS 

OF 

IMMOETALITT. 



FOREGLEAxMS AND FORESHADOWS 



IMMORTALITY 



BY 

EDMUND H. SEAES, 

AUTHOR OF " EEGENEEATIO^T," "THE HEART OF CHRIST," ETC. 



" Shade here, authenticating substance there. 



ELEYEXTH EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
CLAXTON, EEMSEN & HAFFELFINGEK. p 

BOSTON: NOTES, HOLMES & CO. "^>C>\ 

1873. CurYRiSHT^ 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlae rear 1ST2, by 

CLAXTOX, REAISEX & HAFFELFIXGER, 
In the office of tlie Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



The Library 
OF Congress 



WASHINGTON 



mTEODUOTlOK 



About twelve years ago a work was published 
bearing the title " Athanasia ; or, Foregleams of Im- 
mortality/^ It passed through ten editions. The 
present is a revised and enlarged edition of the same 
treatise. The additional matter is comprised mainly 
in Part Fourth, all of which is entirely new, and 
whose object is a comparison of other great religions 
with the Christian to see what verdict they render 
touching the life beyond the grave. In the original 
treatise my aim was an exposition of the Hebrew 
and Christian Scriptures, so as to bring out clearly 
and rationally the revelation which they give us on 
this subject, and to show how it comports with right 
reason and the nature of things. 

The question could not fail to occur. Are the 

Divine disclosures confined to a select race or a single 

people? If other races and peoples have had the 

same hungerings that we have for a knowledge of a 

future state, and if their religions have foreshadowed 
1 * 5 



6 



INTRODUCTION. 



it SO as to show that Christianity is a fulfillment of 
the desire of all nations, then the argument is cumu- 
lative and confirmatory of the life and immortality 
brought to light in the gospel. It places other relig- 
ions not in antagonism with Christianity, but makes 
it a necessity in the course of human development^ 
taking up their half truths in a system all-harmoniz- 
ing and comprehending ; and it shows the Divine 
Providence neither partial nor arbitrary, but educative 
of the whole race of man for the higher existence, 
which Christianity reveals in the light of a more 
perfect day. 

Our theme spreads out before us into four depart- 
ments of inquiry. In Part First, after an exami- 
nation of partial and artificial theories, we endeavor to 
unfold and illustrate the laws of the Immortal Life, 
and show its relation to this outAvard and transitory 
condition ; that of the inward and imperishable man 
to the cumbering and perishable body ; and for this 
purpose we seek for the principle of interpretation 
that shall draw the curtains aside and let the light Of 
the spiritual world fall unobstructed upon the natural, 
SO as to illumine especially the solitudes of the tomb. 
But since the resurrection of Christ, the great exem- 
plar of humanity, constitutes the luminous centre 
whence light comes to us on this class of subjects, we 
devote Part Second to a treatment of this theme, as 



IXTRODUCTIO^C. 



7 



illustrating still more completely the transit of human 
nature from mortal to immortal existence. In Part 
Third we pursue our theme yet further^ in our en- 
deavor to bring out in as full relief as possible St. 
PauFs philosophy of the resurrection and the Future 
Life, and to show how it accords with and illustrates 
his entire Christian theology. In Part Fourth, 
the "Symphony of Religions/' we show how their 
best and clearest utterances are in harmony with 
Christianity and foreshadow it, though struggling 
through doubts and darkness which Christianity 
clears away. 

That the Pevelations of our own Scriptures are 
exceedingly rich and full on the themes in hand, and 
that they contain a philosophy vastly comprehensive 
and exhaustive, will, we hope, be made apparent. 
Our object is to unfold that philosophy and apply it ; 
to show the pneumatology of the Bible in such rela- 
tion to the present life that we may know its hallow- 
ing influence now, and see where the heavens meet 
the earth and whence they are interfused through all 
its duties. 

The subject is both important and timely ; for it is 
hardly to be denied that, with vast multitudes, the 
years flow on very much as they would if man were 
only an animal more finely organized and more highly 
endowed. It is not that the future life is disbelieved 



8 



INTRODUCTION. 



or denied ; there is an expectation perhaps not com- 
pletely extinguished in any mind^ that there is some- 
thing which will survive the shock of death. But 
for two reasons this expectation does not become con- 
trolling in human affairs. 

It does not take form, and therefore it does not rise 
to the dignity and strength of faith. It is a vague 
hope or fear which is not without its influence, but an 
influence too feeble to rule the purpose of life and 
shape its ends. Or if it takes form, it is one so 
entirely factitious and irrational, that the future exist- 
ence is completely foreign from the present, and has 
no genial relations with its concerns; and thus it 
becomes a portentous and lurid superstition to haunt 
our meditations and compel us to prayer, and not an 
inspiration to quicken our pulses and turn our daily 
business to hallelujahs. We believe it is yet to 
become such an inspiration, and toward that consum- 
mation we make this humble contribution to the 
literature pertaining to the subject. 

In the present edition, besides adding new matter, 
we have modified the language of the former editions 
in some instances where it seemed too bluntly contro- 
versial to suit our present taste; and vre should have 
modified farther, but were prevented by a fear of 
sacrificing strength and perspicuity. As it is, we hope 
the candid among all parties in the church, into whose 



INTPwODUCTIO:sr. 



9 



hands the volume may fall, will pardon all imperfec- 
tions in form, as they not less than ourselves would 
see the light of the heavens turned more brightly and 
warmly into the sunless valleys of the earth where 
thousands watch for the morning. 

E. H. S. 



COI^TE]^TS. 



PAET I. 
THE IMMOETAL LIFE. 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. Natukalism 17 

II. Xox-Belief 22 

III. The Theory of Metaphysics 26 

IV. The Theory of Naturalism 34 

V. Foreshadows 42 

VI. Foresplendors 50 

VII. The Bible PNEUsiATOEoaY 63 

VIII. Death, as God ordained it.. 70 

IX. Death, as Man makes it 75 

X. The Kesurrection 81 

XL Organic Connection of the Present and the 

Future Life 89 

XIL The Judgment-Day 101 

Xin. Christ as the Judge 108 

XIV. Everlasting Youth 117 

XV. Eternal Life 122 

XVL Home 125 

XVIL The Heavenly Peace 133 

XVIIL Agreements and Differences 141 

11 



12 CONTE^'TS. 

CHAP. • PAGE 

XIX. Agreements 154 

XX. Summary 160 

XXI. Conclusion 165 



PART II. 
THE EXCAEXATIOX OF THE SOX OF :\IAX. 



I. Introductory , 169 

n. The Great Morning 170 

III. The First Meeting 178 

% IV. The Second Meeting ' 182 

Y. The Meeting in Galilee 184 

YI. The Last Meeting, and the Ascension 189 

A YII. Theories 192 

YIII. Theories 199 

IX. The Glorified Saviour 202 

X. The Post-Eesurrection Body 210 

XI. The Grand Apostolic Doctrine 214 

XII. Conclusions 223 

<l 

PART III. 

Off 

THE PXEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAITL. 



I. Introductory 229 

II. The Doctrine of the Primitive Church 232 

III. The Hebrew Doctrine of Hades 242 

lY. The Scripture Doctrine 247 



C02s TEXTS. 13 

CHAP. PAGE 

Y. St. Paul ox the EEsrEEECTiox 259 

YI. Jettish Ideas co3ipaked t^'ith Christian 268 

YII. The Alleged Xatteaeism of St. Paul 274 

Yin. The Hades of Cheistiaxity 283 

IX. SuiiiiAEY 287 



PART IV. 
THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOXS. 

I. IXTRODUCTOEY 303 

II. The Aeyajst People 305 

III. The Eeligious CoxsciorsxEss of the Hixdus... 311 
lY. The Peesiax Eeligious Coxsciousxess 329 

Y. The Hellexic Eeligious Coxsciousxess 341 

YI. The Platoxic Immortality 361 

YII. Summary axd Coxclusiox 373 

2 . 



PART I. 



THE IMMQRTAL LIFE. 



I 

I 



"If a man has a statue decayed br rust and age, and mutilated 
in manr of its parts, he breaks it up and casts it into a furnace, 
and after the melting he receives it again in more beautiful form. 
As thus the dissolving in the furnace was not a destruction, but a 
renewing of the statue, so the death of our bodies is not a destruc- 
tion, but a renovation. When, therefore, vou see as in a furnace 
our flesh flowing away to corruption, dwell not on that sight, but 
wait for the recasting. And advance in your thoughts to a still 
higher point, for the statuary casting into the furnace a brazen 
image but makes a brazen one again. God does not thus ; but 
casting in a mortal body formed of clay^ he returns you an im.mor- 
tal statue of gold/' — CHEYSOSTOii. 
16 



FOREGLEAMS AND FoRESHADOWS 

OF 

IMMOETALITT. 



CHAPTER I. 

NATUEALISM. 

The tendencies of the present age set strongly and 
decisively toward what some would call by way of 
distinction the practical. That which is apprehen- 
sible by the senses, and can be handled, weighed, and 
measured, is sure to become suf6.ciently valued, while 
that which transcends the senses hardly obtains an 
attentive hearing from the working world. In the 
long run, however, the highest truths are always the 
most useful, and produce the most wide and thorough 
changes in human affairs. Material interests are 
always promoted by spiritual, and neither can be 
undervalued without detriment to the other. It is 
not, therefore, a love of what is really practical which 
works any ill to religion : it always saves religion 
from running into fanaticism and superstition. It is 
not a proper value of material things, it is an intense 
and confirmed naturalism placing itself in opposition 

2* B 17 

J. 



18 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



to the supreme good, which works all tlie mischief to 
religion of which the preachers complain. 

The preachers, however, do not always recognize 
the fact, that there are two species of naturalism, one 
lacking the religious element, the other including it, 
and that the latter is a cropping out from the former, 
and borrows from it its whole style of conception and 
reasoning. In describing these two kinds, and show- 
ing how one runs into the other and shapes religious 
ideas, we shall indicate, we think, a radical vice in 
our theologizings, and disclose one of the deepest 
wants of the present hour. 

By the word "Naturalism'^ we describe a belief 
in nature alone. It is a new name for the old infi- 
delity. It indicates the creed of one who has a lively 
faith in the objects of sense, but in nothing beyond. 
What he can hear, see, handle, taste and smell, he 
affirms to be veritable existences, and he affirms no 
more. This material scene, therefore, spread out 
under the sun and the stars, limits his hopes and 
expectations, and the highest aims of his being do 
not reach any farther. He does not of necessity deny 
that there are other modes and realms of existence. 
He simply does not affirm. If you aver anything 
beyond the limits of time, so far positive as to be 
thought worthy to sway us and shape our ends, he 
reminds you that you have no proof of it, and that 
you have passed over into the region of speculations 
and shadows. 

Though religious ideas be excluded from this creed, 
and cultus, it does not follow of necessity that relig- 
ious names and rites must be — such names as God, 



NATURAIJSM. 



19 



the Soul, Immortality, and Eternal Life. Bat they 
are used invariably to describe tilings and processes 
on the hither side of spiritual existence. God is the 
unconscious energy immanent in matter, circulating 
through all nature, and showing ever a new phasis in 
the trees and the grass, and man and woman. He is 
not a Being out of nature and above it, but a force 
subject to it and locked in with its conditions. In the 
ever-living and glowing Cosmos we behold the beau- 
teous face of the Supreme. The human soul is its 
life circulating in man, instead of the cedar, the myr- 
tle and the violet. The soul is immortal, not indi- 
vidually and consciously, but only in the sense that, 
when a man dies, the life that was in him is drawn 
back into the general vortex, to reappear by and by 
and blossom anew in flowers and animals and little 
children, and so man is sure of eternal life. 

But when it attempts to transcend the sphere of 
visible nature with its growths and decays, it finds 
itself in a vast inane or a hopeless and boundless 
night. Death is not a transition to another existence 
on the thither side of nature, but a change of form 
within it. The region beyond lies on the imagina- 
tion without form or voice or motion. Such is nat- 
uralism without religious ideas, sometimes with the 
pale adornment of religious phraseologies from which 
religious ideas have been expunged. 

Religious naturalism differs from this mainly in 
the fact that it extends the domain of nature farther 
outward into space and time. It never transcends 
nature, or if it does it finds itself in darkness or in 
spectral light and comes back straightway to mate- 



20 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



rialism for a place to stand upon. As it cannot rise 
out of the natural degree of life^ and shake off the 
clogs of sense, its only resource is to drag along its 
cumbrous material, and wield it in spiritual things as 
best it may. It cannot rise to the conception of a 
purely spiritual world, but it can push forward the 
dominion of the natural world so as to include the 
dread hereafter. It cannot rise above the level of 
time, but it can extend its view longitudinally and 
get some glimpse of the adjacent plains. 

Hence its view of death and of what lies beyond it. 
Its immortality is only the natural life prolonged. 
The external body wastes and dies and mingles with 
the dust again. To the natural senses and concep- 
tions the man exists no more. But naturalized faith 
preserves the scattered dust to be combined anew, and 
so its hopes are treasured up in charnel-houses. 
Christ is to have a new incarnation on the earth, 
which is to be burned over and furnished for the risen 
saints ; and here under the reign of natural law is to 
be the kingdom of Christ, amid the gorgeous flora of 
a sensuous paradise. Heaven and hell are not modes 
and realms of being above the natural degree of life, 
and freed of its conditions, but localities somewhere 
among the planetary and stellar spaces, whose precise 
position eludes for the present our poor optics and 
clumsy telescopes. Though the pains of hell are not 
physical altogether, yet the sufferings of the body, 
and its uupropitious and dismal surroundings, are the 
chief things that strike the imagination with dread. 
The Divine Being himself is naturalized and brought 
down to the plane of these conceptions. He is the 



NATURALISM. 



21 



supreme natural man. The creation and government 
of the worhi are a mere stupendous mechanism, and 
its final destruction will be a mere tremendous exer- 
cise of natural strength on the crashing or crackling 
timbers of the universe. And so on. There is not a 
subject in the whole range of religious thought which 
has not been, so to say, completely carnalized by this 
mode of conceiving and representing spiritual things. 
The real future, the eternity toward which w^e travel 
and which is soon to fold us in, lies as completely 
void and formless to religious naturalism as to non- 
religious, and not an echo comes back to either as it 
sends its shout into the abyss. For them there is no 
hereafter which is above the plane of natural things. 
It is very true that theologizers of the school w^e 
describe complain loud enough of naturalistic tenden- 
cies leading to doubts of immortality ; but they them- 
selves go down and swamp in naturalism, the moment 
they attempt to spread their sails on that mystic and 
solemn sea. 



CHAPTER II. 



KON-BELIEF. 

It is generally a waste of effort to reason against 
hard and stubborn Denial, and fortunately that is not 
the state of mind we usually meet with when we dis- 
course of a life to come. There is, however, a wide- 
spread conviction, that this is a subject that lies 
beyond the reach of human ken. It is well to admit 
that we are to live again. Probably w^e shall. But 
when we ask how, when, and where, we trend upon 
forbidden topics, which will yield us nothing but vain 
conjecture, one has come back from the land of 
mystery ; the language of revelation itself is indeter- 
minate and variously understood. Let us confine 
ourselves to what we know, and do the work of this 
world instead of speculating about another. Such is 
the attitude of a mind by which this class of subjects 
is very commonly ignored. Probably a distaste for 
them has been increased by the fact that the sects 
have disputed about them and agreed in nothing, and 
so thousands outside of the sects attend only to their 
present business and ^^jump the life to come.^' 

We would conciliate this class of minds if possible, 
and gain from them an attentive hearing. There are 
two suggestions, we think, which will not fail to get 
an audience with them at last. The first is, that, if 

22 



NON-BELIEF. 



23 



there be a future life, it has probably some very im- 
portant connection with the present. It is not likely 
— no candid mind will so affirm — that the after-scene, 
could we discern it, has nothing to do in shaping the 
end for which we live now ; that two realms of being 
lie closely proximate, and men pass daily from one to 
the other, and yet have no inter-connection which it 
becomes us to know. Men do not reason thus respect- 
ing other periods of their existence. They do not 
think it of no consequence that childhood should have 
some preconceptions of the period of youth, and indi- 
cate what its studies are to be ; that youth shall have 
some forecast of its manhood, and be educated for its 
work ; that manhood shall comprehend in its view the 
period of age, and prepare to go down the stream 
sheltered from the storms. But what if childhood 
and youth, manhood and age, are only successive 
waves in the river of years, that rolls onward its 
mighty waters till they stir the vast ocean- waves 
whose throbs beat on for ever, though they never 
touch the shore ? Is it likely that any period of an 
endless life is to begin de novo, — that any one of its 
ever-moving billows is independent of the rest, and 
not rather the resultant of all the antecedent forces ? 
Does not everything about us and within us indicate 
that this life is preliminary and preparatory, — a seg- 
ment, and not a circle ; and do not all its consenting 
voices make up one grand prophecy of something to 
be hereafter ? Can it fail, then, to occur, at least to 
him who admits the possibility of a future life, that 
what it is, and how, and where, are questions of mo- 
mentous bearing on what the present life ought to be. 



2i 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



and that lieiice the most insignificant occurrence may 
be fitted into a vast and endless economy? If we 
are preparing for something, shall we not ask what? 
If we are afloat, and the shores move from us, and 
farewells are wafted from the banks, shall we not ask 
whither? Does not even the material universe indi- 
cate very distinctly an end beyond itself? Was it 
prepared with so much splendid garniture only for 
beings who perish and return to the earth to be 
" rolled round with its stones and trees " ? Was all 
this lavishment of the Divine wisdom designed only 
to educate man for that, or is it not rather for a 
w^orthier and more lasting result that the worlds with 
rhythmic step travel the celestial highways and pour 
together their unending song ? And if the light of 
the after-scene were turned full upon the fore-scene, 
should we not know better what to do and how to do 
it ? and would not the fore-scene be elevated into new 
importance and grandeur, its smallest things be res- 
cued from meanness and insignificance, and should 
w^e not feel as never before the dignity and beauty of 
our daily life ? 

If all this be so, can a second suggestion fail to 
occur to the non-believer — that some means are prob- 
ably at hand of gaining a knowledge sufficiently 
clear and distinct of what the after-scene is ? Since 
it is probable that such knowledge will have a bear- 
ing on all our doings now, is it likely that the know- 
ledge is withheld ? If some have missed of it, is it 
not probably their fault, and not that of the great 
Eevealer ? and may not the sects have lost it through 
their own j anglings, and because they would not be 



XOX-BELIEF. 



25 



hushed before the Eternal Reason ? And if we rise 
out of the sphere of their noises and stand and listen, 
shall we not be in a position to hear with sufficient 
clearness, not what the synods, but what the Spirit 
saith unto the churches ? Yea, among all the churches, 
do not thirsting and honest minds obtain, under vari- 
ous forms of statement, so much of the substance of 
truth as serves to illumine their steps, and is not the 
agreement more perfect than you suppose among all 
those who have been separated from the disputings, 
and caught inward toward the eternal melodies? 

These considerations, we think, ought to gain for 
our theme a candid hearing, even from those who 
have excluded all such topics from their daily thought. 
They ought to convince the practical man that it may 
be the most practical subject that can possibly engage 
him, even as the calculations and formulas of Bow- 
ditch in his study were of more j^ractical importance 
than the figures of any merchant's ledger to the sailor 

tossing at his helm upon the seas. 
^ 3 



CHAPTER III. 



THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS. 

If we rise out of non-belief to positive affirmation, 
our tlionghts must take one of three forms of concep- 
tion. There are only three possible theories to be 
applied to the future life. It we think about it at all, 
we shall adopt one of them either consciously or un- 
consciously, for none other has ever been conceived 
of by the mind or expressed in language. It is an 
important point gained, when modes of belief can be 
so distinctly classified that we can see clearly the 
range within which our choice must lie. 

The first is the faintest possible departure from 
non-belief. It asserts that the state after death is 
one of mind without body, or, in other words, of 
disembodied spirits and its mode of induction is 
to abstract all the qualities of body, and take what 
is left as our knowledge of the life hereafter. You 
must first go through the process of subtraction, and 
then look after your remainder ; and by this careful 
ciphering you have all that you may affirm of im- 
mortality. Thus : Body has form, color, extension, 
and divisibility into parts. Take these away, and 
you have left pure spirit, without form, without color, 
without extension, and without parts. Body is con- 
ditioned in space. Take away this condition, and 

26 



THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS. 



27 



YOU haYe mind or spirit out of space. Very well. 
Having cleuucled us to this extent, please tell us what 
there is left of us. We get for an answer, "the 
thinking principle/' " pure essence/' "a metaphysical 
entity/' "a substance uncompounded and without 
parts/' "pure simplicity/' "a substance so simple 
that nothing can be simpler, and wdiich may be lik- 
ened to a point which is of no dimension," "a sub- 
stance which has no parts and no extension, and is 
circumscribed by no place," "a monad, indivisible 
and unextended, and therefore immaterial."* It 
must be a "substance," for wdiat is not a substance 
is nothing. But the substance must not have any 
form, for that would look so much like a body that 
metaphysical hair-splitting could hardly show the 
difference. The substance must not be extended, for 
extension requires space to be extended in, and you 
are now supposed to be out of space ; and it must be 
extended, if at all, either up and down, laterally or 
lengthwise, and then you would expand into dimen- 
sions, and that w^ould be body again ; and you are 
supposed to have left your body behind you. So, 
having lost your body, remember that you have be- 
come pure simplicity, or a mathematical point, from 
wdiich you must neither be extended nor expanded 
a hair's breadth ; for then you would expand into a 
heresy which so great a metaphysician as Lord Mon- 

^ Sucli definitions of disembodied spirit are made by Lord Mon- 
boddo, author of Ancient Metaphysics," by Archbishop Seeker, 
by Lord Brougham (see Discourse of Natural Tlieology), by 
Bishop Newton, by Dean Sherlock, by Dr. Good, author of the 
Book of Nature, and by many others. 



28 



THE IMMOETAL LIFE. 



boddo has pronounced as absurd and impious as 
can well be imagined/' and which Dr. Mosheim 
thinks endangers a very important doctrine of the 
Christian Churcli, namely, the resurrection of the 
material body. 

The remainder, therefore, after our subtraction, is 
uncompounded substance compressed to a mathemati- 
cal point and without parts. If the reader should be 
disposed to ask, If there are no parts, how can there 
be any whole ? let him remember that, in metaphysics, 
not only the whole is not always made up of parts, but 
that two and two do not by any means make four. 
And if he should be disposed to burnish his faculties 
in order to get at the profound meaning of these 
philosophers, we beg that he will spare himself that 
trouble ; for we assure him, on their own averments, 
that they do not mean anything at all. Some of 
them are candid enough to tell us that they do not 
attach any ideas to their own language except negative 
ones, and that, when they affirm anything of the state 
beyond death, they use phrases very much as an alge- 
braist uses the terms of an unknown quantity. There 
is this diiference, however. The algebraist has sure 
data by which to determine the value of the unknown 
term. Tlie metaphysician has not ; and V\'e are left 
in woeful doubt of how much value it stands for, or 
whether indeed it stands for any. " In the Scripture," 
says Edward Irving, as quoted by Clissold,* '^the 
state of the soul, where it is set forth, is set forth to 
be a state of imperfection, as it needs must be with- 
out the body " ; and again, the actings and suffer- 
^ New Church Essays, p. 46. 



THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS. 



29 



ings, the blessedness and misery, of a disembodied 
soul are what no man can conceive of, let him imagine 
and let him fancy till the day of doom/^ Lord Mon- 
boddo says, " No one can have a clear conception of 
a substance existing without parts"; and Sherlock 
acknowledges that it " sounds very much like noth- 
ing,'' and is what Ave can " form no positive idea of" 
Dr. Mosheim thinks we ought to be modest in our 
ignorance, and let the question alone. He is very 
sure that, when we step out of this world, we shall be 
without bodies ; but he thinks we ought to shut our 
eyes, and bravely make the plunge, trusting in the 
power of God that we shall not go out in total 
darkness. 

Our case, then, under metaphysical regimen, seems 
disastrous enough. They give us husks, which we 
eagerly strip away; but we find not a kernel of grain, 
or even a cob for the grain to grow on. Our exist- 
ence tapers down to a point, and there they leave us. 
On the negative side, they are confident enough. On 
the affirmative side, they have nothing but words. 
We shall be without space and without body, but it 
does not yet appear what we shall be. Or rather it 
does appear ; for Dr. Good says, ominously, " The 
mind, or thinking principle, can have no place of 
existence : it can exist no- where ; for where, or place, 
is an idea that cannot be separated from the idea of 
extension, and hence the metaphysical materialists of 
modern times freely admit that the mind has no place 
of existence, that it exists now^here." Or, in the 
language of a clear and forcible writer, who has run 
* Book of Nature, vol. iii., p. 7. 



30 



THE IMMOETAL LIFE. 



this theory down into its hist dismal absurditv, as 
soon as a man dies, he goes noirhere and hecomes 
nobody.''^ If this is not a direct phmge into annihila- 
tion, we should think it was grazing as close as pos- 
sible upon its borders. 

Having left your body in the grave, therefore, you 
are supposed to be in limbo, reduced to a mathemati- 
cal point. You must not expand, for then you will 
become body again ; and that will render nugatory the 
doctrine of a future resurrection from the graves, and 
so be a dangerous heresy. You are not to make any 
motion, for motion implies space to move in, — requires 
a here and a there, and you must by no means project 
into space again. These philosophers, however, give 
you the assurance, that, when reduced to this pure 
simplicity," you shall be in no danger of annihilation. 
You are not any further divisible. You are reduced 
to your lowest terms. You are without parts," and 
therefore cannot be divided again, and hence have 
become indestructible. ^Ve think they are right here, 
for the destruction of nothing is not a conceivable 
catastrophe. 

It is perfectly clear that these vrriters not only ex- 
press nothing, but conceive of nothing, whenever they 
think in strict accordance with their ovrn theorjr. Yo 
man ever conceived of spirit without form, or of any- 
thing without form, for the simple reason that no one 
has the power of suspending the laws of thought. 
Any mind may try the experiment to its ample satis- 
faction. Try to send your thought beyond death, 
and represent to it the region of disembodied spirits " 
that exist "out of space." You may try, w^ith Irving, 



THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS. 



31 



till the dav of doom, and still tlie vast future lies 
before you as a total blank. The moment you evoke 
anything out of the boundless inane, it shall rise on 
your thought as foem axd body, and put to rout 
the theories of the metaphysicians. This hypothesis, 
therefore, in everything except the substitution of 
verbiage for ideas, resolves itself back into the notion 
of the non-believer, who does not allow that the 
after-scene should be made an object of thought at 
all. The metaphysicians tell us, after they have 
done, that we must not be curious and speculate upon 
these things. But why did they not say so at the 
beginning, and take their place with the non-believer, 
instead of pretending they were giving us wisdom, 
when they were only playing at shuttle-cocks with 
words ? 

Form and substance are co-essentials of each other. 
As they cannot be separated in the nature of things, 
so it is not in the power of any one to separate them 
in his idea. As soon as you deny form to substance, 
yon deny its existence.* You remove it from the 

^ Cu'^'vortli, in the fiftli chapter of his " Intellectual System," 
reasons finely on the subject of spiritual and angelic bodies, and 
introduces an array of authorities, both from the Christian Fathers 
and the ancient philosophers, some of whose arguments it would 
be difficult to evade. Dr. Mosheim, however, the scholiast of Cud- 
worth, undertakes to refute them. He holds fully to the doctrine, 
that not only spirits, but angels also, are without bodies, and all 
his reasoning starts with the assumption that God is without body. 
If God can exist and act without body, why not angels and spirits? 
Such is his argument ab ignorantia. 

The writer is a Trinitarian. It would be a luxury, if the topic 
were not foreign to our stiojeot, to take up bi= Inoir- and run it out. 
It would be pertinent to a^k: Do you ho. lev e an article of your 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



category of actual things. In vain yon take refuge 
in abstractions and verbiage. In vain you instance 
the qualities of virtue^ goodness, aflPection, intellect, 
and so forth : they must attach themselves primarily 
to living beings, else they fade off into airy nothings, 
not without a name it may be, yet without habitation. 
Qualities must attach to things and attributes to per- 
sons, or else be numbered among the quiddities of 
the Schoolmen. 

The theory of the future life under examination is 
not only powerless over human conduct, since it ut- 
terly fails to make the motives of a spiritual world 
touch visibly on the affairs of this, but it fails as a 
motive power in calling a living literature into exist- 
ence. All the great productions of genius have been 
evolved and nurtured under a very different regimen. 
No Iliad, that brings down the living divinities, and 
makes them mingle in human affairs, — no Divina 
Comoedia, nor Jerusalem Recovered, nor Paradise 
Lost, — not even those creations which the Drama 
calls forth under her potent witchery to unveil hu- 
man nature to itself, — could ever have had existence 

own creed, — the essential Divinity of Christ? And has Christ 
any body? Deny tlie first, and the road is wide open toward 
" Socinianism," if you are not already there. Deny the second, 
and the way looks pretty clear and direct toward the most spec- 
tral kind of Gnosticism. Deny both, and the slide into Panthe- 
ism is remarkably easy. Deny that God exists, and is manifest 
in some form which is above nature, and you will end by seeing 
him sunk in nature. Hence the great doctrine of a Mediator 
which the New Testament makes fundamental. 
Pope says : — 

" There, dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark ; 
V\'its who like owls see only in tiie dark." 



THE THEORY OP METAPHYSICS. 



33 



under the inspiration of such a supernal world. As 
soon as the imagination crosses over the frontier, its 
wings drop frozen, and it falls into the limbo and 
dies. What is imagination, or what is faith, where 
all imagery is prohibited, and what image can start 
out of the vast abyss, where there is no form nor 
body in which it may appear? Body is denied to 
substance, and then substance straightway dwindles 
to a point " and disappears, and we are in an un- 
fathomable death-realm, where black night takes the 
color from things,* and not even a poet can find a 
myth for his machinery. 'Not an angel must show 
his face, or rustle with his wing, for these attach to 
bodies ; and our philosophers will have it — and must, 
if consistent — that angels are without bodies too, they 
also being " pure simplicities.'^ All those great works 
of the human intellect which have been utterances 
out of the heart of humanity, and gone to its heart 
again, are so many protests against these notions of 
the supernatural, — notions that do not even allow a 
spectre to come up, for not a spectre can rise and gibber 
unless you allow him to be bodied forth. And as for 
those hopes and comforts which are the Christian's 
solace at the final hour, these metaphysicians have 
the privilege, when their game at words is over, of 
lying down to the great agony and being turned into 
nobody. All the consolations of their system go with 
them ! But has the Gospel which brought life and 
immortality to light beconie reduced at last to this 
shrunken and shriveled scroll ? 

* "Eebus nox adstulit atra colorein." 
C 



CHAPTEE IV. 



THE THEORY OF NATURALISM. 

As we rise toward something more affirmative and 
tangible, we meet the theory of the resurrection of 
natural bodies which are to be made the future or- 
ganisms of spirits. The resurrection is not to take 
place till the end of time, and the scene of it is to be 
the churchyard or the charnel-house, or whatever 
place may hold in deposit our earthly corporeity. But 
during the long period that is to interspace our death 
and resuscitation, what sort of a foothold are we to 
have in the universe ? Three answers to this ques- 
tion may be distinguished. 

The first is, that w^e are to have none at all. Our 
existence goes out altogether. We suffer a temporary 
annihilation. We are not only reduced to a point, 
but to nothing, until our bodies are revived again. 
This was Priestley's doctrine, vdio in holding it was 
a consistent materialist. 

The second is, that we are to be altogether dis- 
embodied," or by the reasonings of the last chapter 
be a ^^pure simplicity'' only till such time as. the sep- 
ulchres yield up their deposits. This is something 
gained. It is some comfort to reflect that we shall 
not be in vacuo for ever, tliough we must be pushed 
off into it to remain some thousands of years. 

34 



THE THEORY OF NATURALISM. 



35 



The third answer is, that during this long inter- 
vening sleep of the natural body we shall not be 
deprived altogether of corporeity. But our bodies 
will be so attenuated and intangible that we shall 
look forward with longings for the resuscitation of 
those which we have lost. Our bliss will be incom- 
plete till we get them again, our heaven imperfect 
until consummated at the resurrection, when we shall 
come back to the earth, and get once more a secure 
foothold upon it, and in our recovered bodies enjoy a 
millennium amid the fauna and flora of renovated 
nature. The earth will be destroyed and re-created 
in order to become the abode of the risen saints. 

Or, if our final condition is to be an unhappy one, 
we shall nevertheless suffer only a partial and incom- 
plete retribution during the ante-resurrection period. 
Brought back into our lost bodies, their sens-es will be 
made more living than ever, but will only be open 
avenues for suffering to enter the soul and consum- 
mate its misery. 

Meanwhile, in our attenuated corporeity, whither 
shall we betake ourselves to spend the ante-resurrec- 
tion period? As it is only a more rarefied matter 
that we shall wear, we must be somewhere in space, 
and subject to natural law. Speculations on this point 
are various. The author of '' The Physical Theory 
of Another Life,'^ thinks wx may possibly live in the 
sun, though he says he holds the hypothesis cheap." 
A recent writer, whose book is open before us,"^ and 
which is recommended by sound authority, conjec- 
tures that hell may be in the craters of the moon, or 
* The Heavenly Home, by Eev. H. Harbaugh. 



36 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



possibly Uranns may serve as a Botany Bay to the 
bad spirits of our planetary system ; wiiile lie thinks 
he discovers the possible locality of heaven in an 
unusually brilliant spot among the fixed stars. He 
thinks it not impossible that communication may 
some time be established between it and the earth, 
and that comets may serve as vehicles for that pur- 
pose. It was an ancient opinion that the wicked 
W'Ould be put inside of the earth, and kept in subter- 
ranean discomfort and darkness, and Bishop Horsely 
is said to have adopted it. Dr. Scott gives us the 
privilege of ascending into the air; and, as our 
bodies will be exceedingly rarefied, the ascent will 
be easy. 

But wherever our locality may be, one thing is 
agreed upon, — that at the resurrection, and in the 
post-resurrection state, we shall have our lost bodies 
again, to be superindued upon those attenuated ones, 
either for a more intense felicity or suffering. After 
having been turned into spectres for some centuries, 
we shall come back to the churchyards, and gather 
up our remains. But what if they are not there? 
What if, in the endless flux and reflux of matter, 
every particle of the poor dust that ever indued us 
has entered into a dozen other bodies also ? Or what 
will those poor Aztec children do who were eaten and 
went into the bodies of other people? Or, as our 
bodies are changing all the while, which of those 
that we have worn shall we have again, and why the 
last one, that was laid, diseased and worn out, in the 
sepulchre ? Or, after our bodies have been dissipated 
and flowed on again in the stream of life, and been 



THE THEORY OF XATURALISM. 



37 



turned, some into wood, some into leaf, and some into 
apple-blossoms, what reason is there in the fitness of 
things why we should have the same particles again, 
rather than any others, and why will our corporeal 
and personal identity be any better preserved ? And 
why then locate the scene of the resurrection among 
charnel-houses, rather than among orchards or open 
fields? Is it a certain aggregate of particles that 
constitutes the identity and makes them at any time 
my body ; or is it the OEGANiFic peixciple that be- 
longs to my inmost life, and changes to its own pur- 
pose all the matter it incorporates ? That being the 
same, what difference does it make whence come the 
particles which it sucks up into its organism, and 
whether it has had the same ones before or not? And 
why, then, keep such an anxious watch at the gates 
of sepulchres, any more than among clover and corn- 
fields? 

Or what, after all, if the doctrine should prove 
true which Boscovich is said to have broached some 
time ago in his Theoria Philosophia Js'aturalis," 
and which Professor Faraday says now he can de- 
monstrate, — that the old notion of ultimate and in- 
divisible atoms is a mere fiction, and that what we 
call matter is resolvable in the last analysis into 
points of dynamic force? It would be difficult to 
answer such questions to any except those who think 
God will not only work miracles, but self-contradic- 
tions, to meet all the exigencies of theology. 

But suppose bodies somehow to come up out of the 
graves to meet us at the last day, and that we are to 
go into them as the troop of spirits did into the corpses 

4 



38 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



in the Ancient Mariner, what are we to do with them 
then? Being material bodies, they will be subject to 
material laws; and hell must be a pit of material 
fire, and heaven a local paradise conditioned in natu- 
ral space. That God should bring us back into these 
bodies to make us happier, if such indeed were a ne- 
cessary means, might be made morally credible ; but 
that he will empty the churchyards in order to fur- 
nish himself with more ingenious racks to produce 
torture, is not credible. As if those poor ghosts could 
not be made miserable enough in the volcanoes of the 
moon, or down among the central fires where no geol- 
ogist would ever find them, without being brought 
back to the earth, and put into new bodies made for 
the express purpose of producing suffering. Search 
the universe with a microscope, and you cannot find 
that God has made any contrivance to produce j^cdn. 
Pain always results from a perversion of the con- 
trivances which he devised for pleasure ; and analogy 
gives not the faintest whisper to teach us that he will 
ever create a new enginery whose special end is to 
torment the creatures of his hands. 

But, aside from considerations of this nature, it 
occurs to us that there are two very stubborn objec- 
tions against this whole method of theologizing. All 
theories made up after this fashion rest solely on cer- 
tain ecclesiastical props, which are liable every mo- 
ment to become more rotten and to give way. It is 
vain to say that they have the least scientific basis. 
It is vain to say that the Bible teaches them. It 
only teaches them by interpretations made in the 
interest of ecclesiasticisni, whose disgrace and shame 



THE THEORY OF NATURALISM. 



39 



it has always been to butt blindly against scientific 
truth with damage only to itself. Columbus had to 
argue with it whole days, and after all he did not 
convince it that, when he came upon this side of the 
world, he would not be in danger of pitching off into 
nowhere. Over the active mind and the robust rea- 
son which leads the march of discovery, whether in 
the domain of spiritual or natural law, the influence 
of such theories is feeble enough. They are not re- 
ceived in the churches themselves by the common 
mind in its highest and most active moods, except as 
excorii which the authorities require of them to keep 
dried and preserved. We never sat down to converse 
with any one who had lost a friend, with the warm 
idea tenderly cherished, whose mind did not rise clean 
out of the sphere of this churchyard pneumatology. 
It is left behind in almost every earnest prayer, whose 
spontaneous utterings rise to the throne of grace. It 
is totally forgotten yvhen the believer lies down on 
the pillow of death, and feels the throngs of the 
sweet societies gathering about him more bright than 
ever ; not waiting among the fixed stars, and pining 
for their lost members among cadaverous bodies and 
dead men's bones. 

We object to this method for another reason. It 
does infinite mischief to theology. To project carnal 
things into spiritual, and then judge of the latter after 
the methods of the former, is to introduce the abomi- 
nation of desolation into the holy place. It not only 
brings theology into contempt with those outside the 
Church, but turns it from its true end within, as a 
means of making this life a preparation for another. 



40 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



In the mind of every true believer there is one 
idea that lures him on and gives unity to all his ef- 
forts. It is his idea of heaven. Tell us what that 
idea is in any one's mind, and we may know whither 
he is traveling. It is his highest conception of all 
that to him is most lovely and desirable. It is the 
lig^ht that gleams before him and moves on like a 
beautiful star. It is the ideal for whose realizations 
he will spare no strivings, sacrifices, and toils. If 
kept true, it will be the most potent charmer to hal- 
low grief and to sweeten care. You cannot do him 
a greater wrong than to darken it, or turn it into a 
fatuous light that shall lead him astray. 

But what are you doing when you sink theology 
in naturalism, and bring down this idea to the level 
of his carnal conceptions ? What is the consequence 
w^hen heaven and hell are brought down into the 
natural degree of life, and made subject to natural 
law ? Or, in fewer words, what follows when heaven 
and hell are to be reached by locomotion ? It follows 
inevitably that we shall seek to enter the one or avoid 
the other by conditions arbitrarily appointed and im- 
posed. The conditions wdll become intensely and 
grossly natural.' Salvation will be through external 
appliances, covenants, and arrangements. The be- 
liever will expect heaven, not primarily by what he 
IS, but by the creed, and by the ceremonials required 
of him. It will not be by unfolding the angel from 
within him, so much as by ecclesiastical and precatory 
rites ; not by a righteousness in him, but by a make- 
believe righteousness credited to his account, so that 
he can be lifted up and shown in among angels by 



THE THEORY OF NATURALISM. 



41 



the proper certificate and countersign. Hence the 
evils from which we suffer. Hence the ecclesiastical 
villanies in all ages. Hence the masses of worldli- 
ness imported into the Church and embarked for 
heaven. We do not mean that any church avows 
this in terms, or neglects a great deal of talk about 
sanctity and holiness. But sanctity changes insensi- 
bly into sanctimony^ and myriads, with all the holy 
talking and praying, are dominated by the natural 
idea, and expect when they die to travel somewhere 
and bring up at some good place, for reasons that 
have no reference to their most cherished love. In 
short, when theology has sunk into naturalism, the 
highest type of character which it henceforth produces 
is that of the natural man acting through religious 
forms and sanctities, and its internally regenerating 
power has gone for ever. 
4* 



CHAPTEE V. 



FORESHADOWS. 

We rise from these theories to something more 
positive than anything they can furnish. But before 
we attempt to unfold the pneumatology of the Scrip- 
tures, let us pause one moment and gather up the 
probabilities of the case. We may not be able to dis- 
cover the truth ourselves. But we may be able to 
find some intimations and finger-marks that show us 
which way it lies. 

Is it rational, then, to suppose that what we call 
natural body is the most substantial among the crea- 
tions of God, or that the materia which composes it is 
the best substance of which bodies can be made ? Is 
it probable that the natural degree of life is the most 
real of any, and puts forth into the highest and most 
glorious forms ? Is it very likely that, while our 
spirits are clothed in this material vesture, they get 
the most perfect perceptions of form, color, figure, 
extension, contour, motion, distance, or see them 
under their highest laws and combinations ? \\e 
trust we are not insensible to the charms and the 
grandeur of this material scene, where the seasons 
follow in their mystic round, and Day and Jvight and 
Even and Morn spread out their ever-changing pano- 
rama ; nor can we move a hand along the surface of 

42 



FORESHADOWS. 



43 



this body we wear, without a feeling of wonder and 
awe. We have not the least regard for the old Man- 
ichsean doctrine of the essential evil of matter, for it 
is the fair and beneficent creation of God. We would 
not give back to its kindred dust the clay garment 
which our friends have worn and made sacred, with 
indifference ; rather w^ould we watch over it with ten- 
der interest, and keep both the sod and the memory 
green. Whatever has invested a human soul and im- 
aged forth to us its holy affections, we have a right to 
place among the treasured memorials of our love. But 
Avhen you say that the substance out of which these 
bodies are made is the only kind there is, or the high- 
est kind, we hold it a most improbable assumption. 
The human imagination in fact constantly transcends 
Nature, and paints a world beyond the dominion of 
her law^s, where life flowers forth with sweeter grace 
and more celestial beauty, and the vast and the 
sublime are actualized in a higher expanse of gran- 
deur. What we call matter is the most outward 
creation of God, and, so to say, lies on the circumfer- 
ence of his universe, the most inert of all created 
substance. Is it not extremely probable, then, that, 
as you rise out of its domain, and come nearer the 
Central Life out of which all things are evolved, you 
come among substances which are more real, instead 
of less so, and which are carved into forms that radi- 
ate more brightly the everlasting beauty? Will not 
the sense of existence be more vivid and plenary as 
you advance inward toward God, and is it not least 
so on the outer circumference? And if this be true, 
is it probable that, having risen out of the natui-al 



44 



THE nmORTAL LIFE. 



degree into that circle that gathers nearer arotiud Him 
^s'lio is Life and Substance itself, yoti will be turned 
into a ghost, or into nobody, and be put to the hid- 
eous necessity of coming back to the churchyards for 
a substantial form to dwell in ? 

^Vhat is it that makes matter a substance at all, or 
even permits it to be? If our naturalism had not 
infected the whole subject of the creation, such a Cjues- 
tion vroiild not be pertinent. The conception of the 
natural mind is, that God rose up at a certain epoch 
and made the tmiverse out of nothing, and after work- 
ing six days brought it under its present arrangements ; 
since which it has gone on like clock-work with God's 
oversight and care. He exists outside of it some- 
where, and reaches across space to regulate it and 
keep it going : and when he thinks it has gone long 
enough, he will reach across again, and smash it in 
pieces or burn it up. The subjects of Creation, Prov- 
idence, Divine Government, Eschatology, all are 
affected with our naittiralism, and God becomes an 
almighty mechanic, and not a Creator and Governor. 
Bttt can any reasonable mind doubt, in its highest 
thoughts and moods, that the inmost principle of mat- 
ter is the Divine Life itself, — not the Divine Essence, 
as the Pantheist would say, but an effltience from it, 
whence all the qualities of matter are but as the leaves 
and blossoms froLU a parent stem ? And is it not 
therefore true, — not that he created it once out of 
nothing, — but that he creates it every moment otit of 
himself? And does not the great truth begin to 
dawn upon us, that the relation of creator and created 
subsists all the while, and if suspended for a single 



FORESHADOWS. 



43 



instant, the nniverse vanishes like a bubble that 
breaks in air? 

One of two things yoQ must believe, — that naatter 
is self-existent, as the Atheist says, or else that it 
exists because a Life not of itself transfuses it and 
gives it laws. We broach no theory as to what mat- 
ter essentially is. The Atomic philosophers may be 
right, or Berkeley may be right, who resolves matter 
into states of mental perception, or Boscovich may be 
right, who resolves it into points of resistant forces. 
All that we assume is, that God alone is self-existent, 
and that nothing else can ever become so, and there- 
fore that what we call the qualities of matter are 
manifestations from that inmost life whose pulse- 
beats pervade every atom of the mighty aggregate; 
that He alone is, and that all things live by Him. 

Follow this train of thought into its grand results, 
and can you miss the conclusion, that whatever is 
nearest in deg-ree to the Divine nature receives the 
Divine effluence in such ampler measures that it is 
more brightly real than anything we have on this 
low plane of carnal perception, and that the spiritual 
world must therefore spread out its phenomenal 
scenery in forms the most substantial of all created 
things ? 

Then ask yourself the question, Which is nearest 
in degree unto God, mind or matter? Mind cer- 
tainly, for here first we receive that all-plastic energy 
which shapes the soul into the Divine image before 
its pulses beat down into our bodily frames. And if 
mind be nearer in degree to the Divine nature than 
matter, is it very likely the nonentity which the met- 



46 



THE IMMOFvTAL LIFE. 



aphysicians make it, and not rather an orgaxism, 
flooded with an intenser life and constituting a diviner 
substance, and \Yhich, therefore, will appear in diviner 
form Avhen free of its earthly condition ? Will our 
existence then taper down to a point as we ascend 
toward God, and not rather expand and glow into 
organic proportions, compared with which earth has 
nothing so goodly or so fair ? 

But put the subject in another light still, and let 
the appeal be made to our highest experience. Are 
there not times when the soul asserts her supremacy 
over the earthly body, and even her independence of 
it, and rises into a realm of bliss and purity which 
the body knows not of? Yea, when the body hangs 
about her not only as a clog, but a torturing rack, has 
she not soared upw^ard and left it stranded, and en- 
joyed converse with eternal things such as it never 
helped her to enjoy? Apart and "behind the wall 
of sense," have we never been caught up by high 
communings into that diviner sphere where are the 
substances of which earth is only the shadow, — 

As sings the lark when sucked up out of sight 
In vortices of glory and blue air ? 

And is it not therefore probable that we wait here for 
the con&ummation of the heavenly felicity after the 
material organism has been excluded for ever, and 
that we shall not be waiting there to come back to 
natural life in a reunion with the deposits of cemeter- 
ies and charnel-houses ? 

Put the subject in another light still. Let the 
argument start from what has been very well called 



FOEESHADOWS. 



47 



the svDimetry of tlie universe. The author of " The 
Physical Theory of Another Life^' supposes that this 
symmetry can only be preserved by ascribing to the 
universe a threefold extension ; — first, as extended 
through natural space; secondly, as extended in 
duration or in time ; and thirdly, as extended in klndj 
or by diversity in modes of being. He computes the 
vastness of the material creation, — this lowest plat- 
form of existence. Xotwithstanding the velocity with 
which light travels, passing ninety-five millions of 
miles in a little more than eight minutes, there are 
millions of stars so remote that they may have ceased 
to exist three thousand years ago and yet appear in 
their places ; and there may be others which joined 
in the mornins; hvmn of the creation, wdiose lio:ht has 
not yet traveled down to us, but is on its way, and 
when it reaches us w^ill disclose new gems in the 
firmament. ATith these data, the writer puts an anal- 
ogy like this : " Let us imagine ourselves to have 
come up to the exterior wall of a vast palace which 
we have already seen to cover many acres ; but on en- 
tering the outer gate, and j^assing in through its courts, 
we find that the enormous structure rises only one 
story from the basement ; that its chambers are all of 
uniform dimensions, are all alil^e in embellishment 
and furniture, and in seeing the first of its thousand 
halls we have seen all. And what if an unvarying 
ceremonial, an endless round of dull manoeuvres, 
repeated day after day and year after year, comprises 
the history of the personages of this palace? The 
very idea is insufferable." 

Strange that from such a stand-point the writer 



48 



.THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



should not have taken a higher step, that would have 
cleared him at once of materialism, and not suffered 
him to sink back and swamp in it again. The idea 
is insufferable, that with this vast foundation there is 
no corresponding altitude ; that the universe is only 
one story in height ; that life is spread out over these 
boundless flats, but does not also rise upward m 
DEGREES ; that we have unlimited space and endless 
time only to go through the dull manoeuvres of exist- 
ence under material conditions ; that the creating Mind 
spreads out its multitudinous forms and scenic glories 
over the plane of this natural degree, without at the 
same time extending outward through those higher 
degrees, and giving them also their phenomenal worlds 
to reflect his brightness in variant hues and strike 
another chord to his praise. The idea is insufferable, 
that such phenomena as form, figure, color, extension, 
distance, which are only the exfoliation of the Divine 
mind, can take place only under natural law, and for 
material purposes, and that in higher realms and 
modes of being they may not exist solely under spirit- 
ual law, and open quite a new page of wonders in the 
book of the Divine beneficence. The idea ^s insuffer- 
able, that bodies may be made to differ as greater or 
smaller, or more or less rare, and not at the same time 
be made to differ in species, so that the universe cah- 
not only have vastness in extent, but vastness in com- 
pass and range. 

This being so, what will man's course probably be 
as a progressive being? Will he tend from the lower 
apartments toward the higher, or will he be kept eter- 
nally in the routine of the basement ? Will he not 



FORESHADOWS. 



49 



ascend tliroiigli those higher chambers that rise rank 
above rank, and increase in splendor as they rise? 
And-having once passed ont of the natural degree of 
life, will he be likely to hover about the cemeteries in 
order to gel back into it again ? or will he not see a 
hand that still beckons him higher among the angelic 
symphonies and hallelujahs 

* A book bearing the singular title, " The Wisdom of Angels 
concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, by Emanuel Swe- 
denborg," was first published in this country in 1794. It contains, 
among other things, a dissertation on the "Doctrine of Degrees," 
and under its peculiar terminology the reader does not at first get 
the pith of its philosophy. But when he does get it, he sees the 
amazing sweep of the principle set forth, and its constructive power 
in theology, and that it opens a sublime chapter in the history and 
plan of the Creation. 

Since this note was originally written, a new translation has 
been made of the work above named, by E. Norman Foster, and 
published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. The translation is in gen- 
uine and clearly flowing English. We cannot forbear a word of 
commendation of Mr. Fosters other translations of the most im- 
portant works of the wonderful Swedenborg. 
5 D 



CHAPTEK VI. 



FOEESPLENDOES. 

We come now to the only theory that remains to 
us of the future life^ and our contemplations must be 
in accordance with its principles, if we think at all 
and think rationally on the themes of immortality. 
It ceases, however, in our judgment, to be a theory, 
for it is not one of those guesses at truth which are 
made by the wit of man. It is the sacred pneuma- 
tology unfolded to us in the whole course of Divine 
Revelation. 

If any one will take his Bible and read it through 
with his eye specially open to those passages which 
bring the things of immortality clearly within his 
range, he will be amazed at the richness and fullness 
of the Divine disclosures upon this subject; and he 
will wonder whence could have originated the current 
aphorisms of non-belief, that " little is said upon the 
subject," and we must not attempt to pry into it.'^ 
From the beginning to the end of the Divine dis- 
pensations the fact of a spiritual world is assumed. 
'No attempt is made to prove it logically, for the sim- 
ple reason that rents and openings are constantly 
made, through which it floods the earth with sun- 
beams. 

A spiritual woeld^ we say, and not a future state 

60 



FORESPLENDORS. 



51 



merely; a world of forms and substances, and organ- 
ized existences, whose intense life and giant realities 
are in striking contrast with the pale tints and dull 
activities of this natural state of being. Why have 
these passages to so great an extent been blinked at 
and ignored? Is there any other reason than our 
habits of sensuous thought, which regards all objects 
but natural ones as only shadows ? 

The Scriptures adopt two distinct methods by which 
to give assurance to the believer and bring him under 
the influence of eternal things. The first is that of 
promise, — promise of the blessed inheritance, — as 
Jesus when going away left the assurance that he 
would prepare mansions for his followers, or as Paul 
when he wrote to relume the faith of those who wept 
for them that had fallen asleep. The second is that 
of DISCLOSURE, the visible evidence which comes in 
those angel-appearings which uncover eternal verities 
to human gaze. The former certifies us of the fact 
of immortality. The latter does more ; it unveils its 
laws and methods, and in so doing gives us in the 
Sacred Scriptures a clear, consistent, and beautiful 
pneumatology. 

We will select a few passages of the latter class, 
and then we will indicate the laws of existence which 
they bring fully into light. The Old Testament 
abounds in them ; but the New Testament is itself 
an apocalypse of the Future in the Present. 

Genesis xxviii. 10-17. Jacob ^'dreamed,'' the 
record says. But while the natural senses were 
locked fast, an inner sense was touched, and opened, 



52 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



and made to apprehend other and higher things than 
dreams are made of. Another class of agencies ap- 
pear rising rank beyond rank^ and disclosing the 
future course of the Divine Providence. His natural 
senses open again, and so impressed is the patriarch 
with the higher verities that exist within and beyond 
them, that he pronounces the place " dreadful/' and 
" the gate of heaven,'^ 

2 Kings ii. 9-12. The history and writings of a 
class of persons called prophets comprise a very large 
portion of the books of the Old Testament. The 
reader may not have noted the special significance 
of the fact that this class of persons have two dis- 
tinct functions. One is that of prediction, by virtue 
of which they simply deliver the message that comes 
to them, with the formula, " Thus saith the Lord." 
The other is that of prevision, and is a higher and 
ampler endowment. By this the prophet has open 
view of the realm of causes, and with a new power 
of perception is confronted with the objects and en- 
vironed with the scenery of a higher world. Let 
the reader keep carefully in sight this distinction be- 
tween prophecy and seership in passages cited from 
the prophetic writings and history. 

In the passage above cited we have the history of 
wdiat is generally called the translation of Elijah. 
Both Elijah and his companions have premonitions 
that his transition from natural to spiritual existence 
is at hand. Knowest thou that the Lord will take 
away thy master from thy head to-day " Yea, I 
know it ; hold ye your peace." In view of the sol- 



F0RE3PLEXD0RS. 



53 



emn parting which was soon to take place, Elijah 
says to Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before 
I be taken away from thee." And Elisha said, I 
pray thee, let a double portion of thv spirit be upon 
me"; that is, I pray that I may receive in the fullest 
sense thine own special endowments. The reply is, 
"Thou hast asked a hard thing; nevertheless, if 
THOU SEE ME when I am taken from thee, it shall be 
so unto thee ; but if not, it shall not be so " ; which 
means, if you have open vision of the change that 
awaits me, that of itself will show that your prayer 
is granted, and that you have the highest prophetic 
endowment. And as they went on and talked, they 
were parted asunder, and Elisha saw the prophet 
ascend to heaven on " the horses of fire and the cha- 
riots of fire." What became of the natural body we 
are not told. But that this was not what was taken 
into heaven is clear from the fact that it required a new 
kind of perception to witness the spectacle. It was 
not a transfer from one locale to another, but from a 
lower degree of existence to a higher, and it required 
the gift of seership to apprehend it and the stupen- 
dous agencies which it involved. It Avas not there- 
fore a translation, but a transfiguration ; not an ascent 
throuo^h the air to heaven, but an ascent throug^h the 
altitude of being, precisely like the changes of mor- 
tal dissolution. 

2 Kings vi. 11-17. The mantle of Elijah falls on 
Elisha ; that is to say, the highest function of the 
prophetic gift becomes his also, for he sees those ob- 
jects that lie within the realm of causes. He reveals 

5* 



54 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



the secret counsels of the Syrian king, and becomes 
obnoxious to liis vengeance. The king sends to arrest 
him. To make sure of success, he arms a great host, 
and provides horses and chariots ; and they go by 
night and beleaguer the place where the prophet is 
abiding. It is the town of Dothan, which lies twelve 
miles north of Samaria. A great host of horses and 
chariots to arrest one poor prophet, who has none to 
defend him but a single servant ! Morning comes 
and lifts away the darkness, and the servant looks 
out through the space that surrounds the city, and the 
Syrian army appears in all its numbers. Alas, my 
master, what can we do 

The prophet regards with indifference the glittering 
cavalcade, for he sees what his servant cannot. " Fear 
not, for they that be with us are more than they that 
be w^ith them.'' And Elisha prayed, and said, " Lord, 
I pray thee opek his eyes that he may see." 
And a new sense in the young man is indeed opened, 
and the agencies of Divine Providence, invisible to 
mortal sight, the horses of fire and the chariots of 
fire," appear, — the ministers by which the good man 
is engirded when others see it not, and drawn up into 
the Divine protection, though in the midst of difficul- 
ties and visible dangers.* 

* It has been asserted by some writers, that, in the angel-appear- 
ings both of the Old and New Testament, the angels assumed a 
material body for the purpose of making themselves visible to 
men. It is a sufficient reply to this, — first, that there is not a 
shadow of evidence for it, and that you might just as well assume 
that human beings have no bodies except while you are looking 
at them ; and, secondly, there is evidence enough against it in the 
facts of the case. The disappearance of tlie angel is as seldom as 



FORESPLENDORS. 



55 



Ezeklel, first chapter. In this, we have described 
that highest of the prophetic state in which prophecy 
passes into seership ; when the natural world is ex- 
cluded, and a higher one rises objectively on the inner 
sense, couched for this very purpose by the Divine 
hand. A new order of intelligences is revealed, an- 
other firmament is over their heads, other scenery is 
round about with its own series of imagery, and other 
forms appear in which the spirit bodies forth its full- 
ness of life. " And when I saw it, I fell upon my 
face, and I heard a voice as of one that spake." 

Luke iii. 21, 22. Xow when all the people were 
baptized, it came to pass that, Jesus also being bap- 
tized, and j^raying, the heaven was opened, and the 
Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove 
upon him, and a voice came from heaven which 
said, ^ Thou art my beloved Son ; in thee I am well 
pleased.' In the parallel passage in Matthew it is 
said, ^^The heavens were opened unto him/' We 
hope it is not necessary to show that other than the 
natural heavens are here spoken of, and that prayer 
with the Saviour was none else than opening upward 
the inward mind until it lay manifest under divine 
and celestial presences, which were above it and with 
it as another day. 

Luke ix. 28—36. The transfisfuration was one of 
two things. It was either a dream of the three 

his appearance. AVLat becomes of tlie assumed material body 
■when he has done with it? According to this notion, when he 
disappears lie ought to leave a corpse behind him. 



56 



THE IMMOETAL LIFE. 



disciples, or an open vision of veritable existences. 
Which of the two we are to regard it may be very 
easily determined. Happily, the Greek word, unlike 
the English, is fixed, and held invariably within a 
certain range of meaning. 

The language of the narrator is : " Peter and they 
that were wdth him were heavy wdth sleep ; and when 
they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men 
that stood with him.^^ Here it is evident that they 
first passed through that process which locks up the 
outward senses, and then the inner mind rose more 
wakeful than before to an apprehension of higher 
things. The Greek w^ord rendered here " they saw,'' 
is eloov, a word which never applies to dreaming, but 
invariably implies, not the mental act of perception 
only, but the object of it also. This shows most 
clearly, that the spectacle on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration was not phantasmic, but real, and that it 
was a disclosure to the disciples of their Master, not 
in the mortal and suffering form w^hich appeared to 
the outward eye, but in that immortal and divine 
form by virtue of which he was ever " in heaven," 
and held converse with its glorified inhabitants. 

Luke xxiv. 1-9. This passage describes some of 
the circumstances attending the resurrection of Christ, 
and we refer to it here for the special purpose of edu- 
cing the principle involved in the appearance of the 
angels. The variations of statement on this subject 
have caused needless perplexities and discussions on 
the falsely alleged contradictions in the four narra- 
tives. On comparing them together, you find that 



FORESPLENDOES. 



57 



the angel-appearances were not the same to all the 
witnesses. Mary looked into the tomb, and saw 
there two men in shining garments. Peter and John 
came out of the tomb just before Mary looked in, 
and saw nothing. At the same point of time some 
saw one and some saw two, some in one place and 
one at least in another. All the difficulties in the 
case arise from the absurd assumption that these 
angels appeared in bodies like ours, and to the ma- 
terial organ, whereas from the whole account it is 
evident they were apprehended through a change in 
the minds of the 'percipients, sliglit in some, more full 
in others, complete probably in none ; so that some 
saw more and some less of those transcendent min- 
istries which, within the veil of mortal sight, waited 
around the central fact in the Divine plan for human 
redemption. If there is any doubt as to the nature 
and method of these appearances, it may be dissipated 
by reference to verse twenty-third : " They {i. e. the 
women) came, saying that they had also seen a vision 
of angels, which said that he was alive.^' The word 
rendered "vision" is here oTiTaaia, — a word which in 
the Scriptures is never used to signify natural sight, 
but is invariably employed to describe the mind's 
open apprehension of supersensual things.* 

Acts i. 9-11. This passage describes the circum- 
stances attending our Lord's ascension. The reader's 
special attention is here directed to the fact of the 
sudden appearance on the scene of " two men in white 
apparel," and their disappearance from it. 

* See Luke i. 22 ; Acts xxvi. 19 ; 2 Cor. xii. 1. 



58 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



Acts vii. 55-57 describes the death of Stephen the 
protomartyr. Being full of the Holy Ghost^ he 
looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory 
of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, 
and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the 
Son of man standing on the right hand of God." 
The reader will please note the fact that this solemn 
perspective expanded upon the martyr's gaze just 
before his death, and that the by-standers saw noth- 
ing of it. Had it been visible to those cruel murder- 
ers, their deed would have been arrested. But while 
the blows were falling upon the sufferer, and only 
their bloody work was visible to them, he saw the 
eternal gates lifted up, and looked full on immor- 
tality. 

Acts ix. 1-18, xxii. 6-16, xxvi. 12-18. We have 
here three different accounts given of the conversion 
of Saul of Tarsus, — one by Luke, and two by Paul 
himself. They are variant, but being compared, and 
all the facts brought together, their consistence is 
admirable and complete. The order of events is 
clearly this. 

Damascus, a city of Syria, is about one hundred 
and thirty-six miles from Jerusalem, and by the an- 
cient methods of traveling was about six days' journey. 
It is skirted on all sides by sandy plains, that burn 
and glister under an Orient sun, but the city itself 
stands on a little oasis, watered by a single stream, 
that divides into many threads, which wind through 
the streets and fill it with the low murmurs of rills. 
It is the Syrian capital, is embowered in trees, and 



FORESPLENDORS. 



59 



thus rises like a green islet out of the wide sea of 
scorching sand. It contained a Jewish synagogue, 
some of whose members had apostatized from the 
Jewish faith and become Christians. 

Saul is a young man and a bigoted Jew, educated 
in the best Jewish school of theology, and learned in 
all its lore. He is fresh from his studies, and full of 
zeal and endowed with high intellectual energies. He 
brings the case of the Syrian apostates before the San- 
hedrim at Jerusalem, obtains from them letters of 
authority and an armed police, and starts for Da- 
mascus for the purpose of arresting the heretics, and 
probably putting them to death. He has come w^ithin 
sight of Damascus. It is high noon, and they can see 
the city away through the hot and stifling air, and 
they feel sure of their prey. 

The noon is blazing down upon the Syrian plain, 
and we appreciate the force of the language when it 
is said that a brightness greater than that of a Syrian 
noon now surrounds the travelers and overpowers 
them. And please observe the difference in the im- 
pressions made on the minds of the company. They 
all witness a sudden and intolerable brightness. They 
all hear a sound, resembling probably that of thun- 
der, rolling down out of a clear sky.* Damascus, 
the green oasis, suddenly disappears from their sight ; 
they perceive only the blaze that involves them ; they 
cannot bear it, and they fall prone. But one of the 
company perceives something more than a blaze of 
light, and hears something more than a rumbling 
sound. Within that blaze there is a person, and 
* Compare with John xii. 29. 



60 



THE IMMOETAL LIFE. 



witllin that sound there are Hebrew words, and he 
hears his own name articulated aloud, " Saul, Saul, 
why persecutest thou me?" Who art thou, Lord?'^ 

I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. Rise and stand. 
Go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou 
shalt do." The light pales away and disappears; 
they rise and stand, but all is a blank now to Saul. 
He is blind. The intolerable blaze is followed by 
midnight blackness, but his attendants see again, and 
the green city looms up in the distance as before. 
They lead the blind and stricken man into it, and he 
now inspires pity rather than terror. They conduct 
him to the house of a friendly Jew, where he betakes 
himself to contrition and prayer. Though all is dark 
without, light begins to dawn from within. For, 
behold, as he is praying, a sweet and kindly face seen 
in vision melts through the gloom, until the form of 
a man stands before him and lays his hand upon him 
in blessing. He knows not the benevolent face, but 
it is the presage of heavenly mercy. Three days pass 
away, and a footstep enters his apartment. A hand 
is laid upon his head, and a voice tells him to open his 
eyes. His eyes are opened, and lo ! he looks up into 
the same face that came before him in vision. It is 
the face of Ananias, a converted Jew, — one of those 
persons whom he came from Jerusalem to imprison 
and slay. He rises and is baptized into the faith he 
so lately hated and persecuted. 

The word again rendered vision " in the Scripture 
narrative of Saul's conversion is oTzraaia^ — a word 
specially used to designate the sight of objects which 
are not within the sphere of the natural senses. 



FOEESPLENDORS. 



61 



The Apocalypse. This is the only book of the 
IN^ew Testament which is prophetical throughout; 
that is, in which all the scenery is strictly and en- 
tirely extra-natural. The reader will note carefully 
the expression of the writer at the beginning, I was 
in spirity^ — zv 7i\^e6fio.zCy — an expression specially ap- 
propriate to describe a change in the inner mind 
produced by quickening and elevating that sense 
which becomes cognizant of the objects of a higher 
sphere. It does not denote a sharpening of the nat- 
ural sight to discern things more subtle or remote, 
but just the reverse. It denotes a closing up of the 
natural sight, and the opening of a new eye to a light 
that never strikes our fleshly eyeballs. From this 
state the prophet of Patmos gives us the vast and 
solemn panorama of what he saw. 

It comes not within our scope to expound the Apoc- 
alypse. Ahstine raanus, imp^ohe, — Keep ofP profane 
hands. It has been constantly expounded as if it 
represented natural things by natural things, and, 
following this method, Dr. Cummings finds in these 
chapters cholera, potato-rot, influenza. Napoleon Bona- 
parte, and so forth. Not till we purge ourselves of 
this vice in theologizing will the expositors be able to 
open the book and loose the seals thereof. What we 
here indicate is the fact of extra-natural scenery, 
spread out in such wise as to body forth a life so much 
more intense than aught we experience here, that even 
the prophet could not bear the sudden blazon, and fell 
as one dead under the too ardent effulgence. Let 
Lord Monboddo, and the scholiast of Cudworth, put 
their eye here for a moment where the prophet has so 

6 



62 



THE IMMOETAL LIFE. 



poised his telescope as to sweep the higher heavens 
and bring them near, and then let them say whether 
God is beholden to dull matter alone in the creation 
of worlds, and whether the phenomena of form, color, 
extension, distance, motion, may not be produced 
otherwise than under the combinations of natural 
law, and in a sunlight so much more warm and full, 
that the earth in comparison seems to suffer eclipse, 
and to hang like a corpse in the shadows. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE BIBLE PXEUMATOLOGY. 

We liave only iDclicatecl the more prominent among 
the passages of the Divine Word which contain the 
disclosures of a future life. We ask the reader to 
take his Bible, and go through with it with his mind 
intent on this subject, and note how large a portion 
of it has been ignored. We now proceed to enume- 
rate the laws and modes of existence which are here 
brought clearly into view. 

1. First, the reader will notice that a spiritual 
world is revealed whose scenery is objective ; that it is 
a WORLD, and not a state merely ; a world, not only 
of substances, but of bodies and forms ; and that 
these bodies and forms glow and pulsate with a more 
plenary life from Him who is the life of all. Let 
him take note of the fact, that the exhibition of 
body, form, figure, and extension does not by any 
means cease, but, on the other hand, that these are 
continued with such , higher and more overpowering 
majesty that the percipients could not bear the dis- 
closure. So far from being unreal and spectral, it is 
the reality of which earth is only a dull and feeble 
adumbration. 

63 



64: 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



2. Then take note of the fact that it is not dis- 
closed to the natural senses of the percipients, but 
invariably to an inner sense touched and elevated for 
this very purpose. Hence, that it is a world that lies 
out of the range of natural space, and its substances 
differ from natural ones, not in tenuity, but in species. 
Its fields are not to be reached by traveling through 
the planetary distances, but by having the soul made 
cognizant of its presence. This may be made appre- 
hensible by illustrations and analogies. 

There is a child asleep amid summer scenery, shut 
in to a dream-world of his own. In that dream-world 
he sees a variety of pleasing objects, frolics with his 
companions, and plashes in the brooks ; and so de- 
lighted is he that his cheeks are aglow and a smile is 
playing around his lips. It is all real to him, and he 
knows for the time of no other mode of existence. 
But all the while he is in a world still more bright 
and objective, of which he has not the faintest cogni- 
zance. The fragrance of flowers is wafted over him 
unperceived, and the Avarble of birds falls unheeded 
upon his ear. He is in two worlds at once, — con- 
sciously in one, unconsciously in the other. How will 
you transfer his relations from the first to the last ? 
How will you bring him from the dream-world into 
the real one? Not by taking him on a journey 
through space, but simply hy waJcing him up. Close 
one set of senses, and open another, and the whole 
work is done. One world vanishes, and another 
opens upon him its endless range of objects. So it is 
with us. We dream now ; we shall wake anon, and 



THE BIBLE PIS'EUMATOLOGY. 



65 



wonder at the fields which lie about us and the skies 
that bend over us.'^ 

^ " Suppose that a man had been created without the sense of 
hearing or of sight. He stands by the waterfall : the wild mag- 
nificence of the surrounding scene, the rainbow softness and repose 
blended with its energy, the deep and awful harmony of its tones, 
uttering themselves in the solitude of nature, are there; but to 
him all is silence and darkness. He goes out as the gray dawn 
feebly spreads itself over the east, ray after ray shooting up into 
the darkness of night, till the whole horizon is glowing, and the 
sun comes forth amid a general burst of song from field and grove. 
Still to him all is darkness and silence, — no voice, no light, and 
no intimation that such things are. A tradition there may be, like 
our traditions from prophets, that to some of his race, in distant 
ages, strange revelations respecting these things were made ; but 
they soon faded out, — the light he supposes shone but for a day, 
and ever after a universal blank overshadowed the earth. But sud- 
denly his ears are opened, and unimagined sensations throng upon 
him. Melodies that seem from heaven, all harmonious sounds of 
winds and birds and flowing streams, break in upon the silence of 
centuries. Then his eyes are opened, and a new creation is before 
him : earth and sky, with all the changes that pass over them ; 
the approach of morning and evening, of spring and summer ; 
and not less than these, the human face, on which are imprinted 
like passing lights and shadows the various emotions of the soul ; 
— all these, amid which he has lived from childhood, come out as 
a new order of being. 

" Now is it unreasonable to suppose that a new sense added to 
what we now have might reveal to us qualities and beings as much 
brighter than any we now witness, as the revelations of sight are 
brighter than the objects of touch? For example, we now see 
only effects, the plant, the tree, the men, and the coarse material 
out of which they are formed. But why might not a sense be 
given to see the causes which we know must exist? And what a 
revelation would this be, — to see all the secret causes that are at 
work in matter, producing the marvelous revolutions that are now 
in everything taking place on the earth ! But suppose this faculty 
so enlarged as to take in the causes that act not only on matter, but 
on mind. Might it not be that spiritual influences would be revealed, 
6 * E 



66 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



3. The reader will not fail to notice another fact 
of the first importance. What we call the soul^ the 
immortal man, is not a metaphysical nonentity or 
'^pure simplicity/' but an organism more perfect than 
that of the outward body, because more replete with 
the Divine energies. On this point we refer specially 
to the scene of the transfiguration, when Christ ap- 
peared to the disciples as the Divine Man wdiom the 
Roman spear could not pierce, the same as after the 
earthly organism had been excluded, and he was 
revealed to St. John, iu TZPSu^uaTi, from the glorified 
state. Man, immortally organized, does not appear 
as such when included wdthin these earthly condi- 
tions, for the simple reason that immortal substance 
differs in species from natural, and is therefore cogni- 
zable only to a higher order of perceptive faculties. 
All the more, however, does the soul live, an organi- 
zation in itself, thouodi actius^ now throuo-h the instru- 
mentalities of flesh and bone and sinew. 

4. Another truth dawns upon us, which we pause 
to notice here, without attempting to spread it out in 
all its bearings. It will be seen, that, while all the 
qualities we have enumerated — form, color, figure, 

surrounding us, going tlirougli our lives, coming when we least 
suspect it, like songs and sunbeams upon the blind and deaf, and 
lingering with a more exquisite beauty and melody around what 
seem to- us the most lonely, dark, and disconsolate hours? Might 
we not then see that they who had seemed lost are still around 
us, — that Jesus, that the wise and good of all times, who lived and 
died for man, did not close their ministry with their lives, but are 
still with unseen counsels helping forward the great purposes of 
Godr—Bev. J. H. Morison. 



THE BIBLE PXEUMATOLOGY. 



67 



motion^ extension^ nearness^ distance — pertain also to 
the spirit-world^ there is this essential difference, that 
they exist there, not under natural law, but under 
spiritual. In other words, they exist there as the 
exhibition of moral and spiritual qualities, and not as 
the exhibition of an outward and sensuous beauty. 
'No sensual paradise is revealed. Everything is alive 
and aglow with spiritual truth and celestial goodness, 
and from these come all its charms and glories. As 
this principle signalizes most impressively the pneu- 
matology of the Bible, and clears it heaven-wide of 
the slough of naturalism, we will endeavor to give it 
as lucid an illustration as it will bear. 

In Revelation vii. 9-14, the Revealer describes the 
ritual of heaven, and speaks of the worshipers as 
" clothed in white robes,'' and again as having washed 
their robes " white in the blood of the lamb.'' We 
perceive at once that this describes the inmost life of 
the celestial worshipers, that the " robes " are put on, 
not from without, but from within, and are the ex- 
figurations of that celestial purity and innocence 
which have been wrought in the redeemed by the 
Lamb of God. 

Again, xxii. 1, 2, we have a description of delight- 
ful scenery, — a river clear as crystal, fringed on either 
side with trees that hang with delicious fruits. But 
the reader is not in the least danger of a relapse into 
naturalism, for he sees by the Avhole description that 
all this scenery is the manifestation of spiritual and 
moral attributes and qualities. 

Again, we have a description of day without night, 
xxii. 3-5, but it is not day produced by natural suns. 



68 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



"Solemque simm sua sidera norunt," — they know 
their own sun and their own stars. Such is the more 
full and open perception of God's presence^ that this 
is the sun which invests the fields with light and 
makes an eternal day. 

So again, with a secure grasp upon this principle, 
we are not in the least dantrer of beino; misled when 
we read the description of the state of unhappy 
souls, — the lake of fire that ever burns, and the 
smoke of their torment that ever ascends. These 
also are descriptive of moral and spiritual qualities, 
of unclean lusts and dark delusions become phenome- 
nal, and flinging their colorings and shapings over the 
world in which they dwell ; not of a place into which 
souls are transferred by outward arrangements. 
There, too, is an outward world as well as an inward, 
but one enfolds and glasses the other, and the spirit 
always imprints itself on its own surroundings. 

We cite these as special illustrations ; but take any 
prophetical portion of the Bible, and seek the princi- 
ple that underlies its imagery, and you shall find 
invariably that what we here regard as the natural 
qualities of things there cease to be such altogether, 
and are, so to say, completely humanized. They 
exist and combine under another law, and body forth 
a redeemed or a degraded humanity. In the whole 
gorgeous panorama which the prophet unrolls, there 
is not a shade nor a tint which is not a reflection of a 
more interior life, and all changes are but the varia- 
tions in its lights and shadows. Mohammedan or 
millennial Paradises, or the Tartarus of heathendom, 
or of a heathenized Christianity, are there unknown. 



THE BIBLE PNEUMATOLOGY. 



69 



5. The proximity of the spiritual world to this is 
another truth brought distinctly into view ; but if the 
reader will exercise a moderate amount of intelligence, 
he will perceive that this nearness is not of the nature 
of juxtaposition of body with body. Not as the 
author of the Physical Theory conjectures, nor as the 
current '^Spiritualism'^ teaches, — that the spiritual 
world is a subtilized natural one on the plane of 
materialism. It is above us, not in space, but in the 
higher degree of its life and the higher species of sub- 
stances that compose it. But it is near us, and we 
are in it because our souls are of like substance, and 
are organisms to receive its spirit and breathe its airs, 
and have latent in them those orders of perceptive 
]30wers capable in due time of giving us open rela- 
tions with it, and unobstructed sight of its transcend- 
ent glories. 

Under the guide of these principles, very simple, 
and as it seems to us very plain, the Bible pneuma- 
tology stands before us clear, distinct, and rational. 
We leave behind us alike the nonentities of meta- 
physics and the absurdities of naturalism, and the 
spiritual world rises out of the dreary inane, rank 
beyond rank, away toward the foot of the throne, 
each rank instinct with new life as it ascends, because 
nearer in degree to the source of being, each occupy- 
ing a plane of existence that grows in beauty as it 
rises ; — " Largior hie campos aether, et lumine vestit 
purpureo," — where an ampler ether invests the fields 
with purpurcal gleams. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



DEATH, AS GOD OKDAINED IT. 

The change which we call death is to be contem- 
plated from two points of view : first, as an ordinance 
of Providence ; and, secondly, as an evil after the 
laws of Providence have been infringed by sinful 
agency. 

What death is in its essential nature doth very 
plainly appear. It appears from our preceding course 
of argument, and it appears from all that we know 
of it in lower natures. Death is the removal of an 
outgrowth after it has accomplished its functions and 
become a hindrance, — the ontward bark of the tree 
become dry, and scaling off that the tree may expand 
with more thrift and freedom. Death is a necessary 
stage in human progress, of which the lower analogies 
prophesy in strains of joy. 

Man's progress has three distinct and successive 
stages. He has three times to be born before he 
knows the full endowments of his nature. He was 
not made perfect at once, because he would not then 
have had the bliss of an unfolding and progressive 
life. It was designed that he should rise from lower 
to higher, the goodly prospect ever enlarging, each 
preparing for the one that shall follow; so that noth- 
ing becomes old ; all is changing and all is new. 

70 



DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT. 



71 



First is the natural birth. He begins his existence 
on the plane of nature, and seems only a more fully 
developed species of the animal kingdom. He comes 
with sensuous wants and appetites, and when placed 
side by side with one of the lower animals, you would 
not discover at once those powers that distinguish him 
from them ; just as the living seed seems not to differ 
at first from a portion of inorganic and lifeless matter. 
But wait a while, and the one crumbles and perishes, 
while that which contained the vital principle shoots 
forth the living blade. The ignoble form of the brute 
conceals no order of powers that are held in waiting. 
It is otherwise with man. You soon find that there 
is quite another series of faculties that stir within him 
and claim their birth. Let the animal nature be sat- 
isfied to the full, and the senses be regaled with all 
that is most seductive in sights and sounds and fra- 
grance, — there is a nature still which is not satisfied, 
but keeps calling for objects of which sight and sound 
and fragrance bring no sufficient tidings. The animal 
gradually disappears, and the man is disclosed. This 
shall increase, while the other shall decrease. So far 
from finding here nothing but animated flesh, you 
discover a spirit allied with seraphim included in 
this animal frame. Not from the sphere of sense 
without, but from within, and from a mystic world, 
come the idea of God and tidings of immortality. 
Reason, and conscience, and affections dear and holy, 
unfold under these new ideas, and their highest com- 
bined action is that faith to which a new heavens and 
a higher order of being unroll their mysteries and 
pour down their warm illuminations. Now, therefore, 



72 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



comes the second birthday of man. He wakes to a 
new consciousness, that of spiritual existence, that of 
relations to a world which eye hath not seen, but 
which hath projected its image into his soul. It is 
his spiritual birth. Before, he trod the earth, but 
little higher than the animals ; now, he walks be- 
neath the heavens, but little lower than the angels. 

But is this all ? Is the man full grown, and has 
he yet come into a world that gives full range to his 
powers? No, it is not all. It is true, that, up to a 
certain point in its progress and enlargement, the 
spirit needs none other than a material organization. 
But its powers gather strength, and the sweep of its 
vision becomes wider. Fields of knowledge open 
upon it which it cannot explore when cumbered with 
clay. More than all, the affections are not satisfied. 
Objects of surpassing loveliness are disclosed to the 
eye of faith, which it would approach in a nearer and 
holier communion. Here the soul takes hold of im- 
mortality only through representatives, and though 
these copy out the Eternal Power and Godhead in 
sensible forms, they are copies only, and not the un- 
veiled originals. Here she looks through a glass 
dimly, and approaches her Saviour through symbols ; 
she yearns to go behind the symbols, and see the un- 
clouded face of her Beloved. Here she sees only 
effects or gross results; she yearns to explore the 
realm of causes, and see into the life of things. Shall 
all this be permitted? Or shall the soul, when her 
faculties have ripened, and when they demand a 
higher organism, be still subject to the clogs of flesh ? 
Must she creep like the reptile, when ready to rise on 



DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT. 



73 



the wings of the eagle? AYheii prepared for wider 
beneficence, and nobler activities, shall she have no 
better implements than these clumsy organs, "but 
little better than those of the brute that grazes in a 
meadow ? 

The powers of the body must now be put in sym- 
metry with the powers of the mind. Ripe for its 
transformation, its exuviw drop off, and it rises with 
nimble motion into a freer air. The growing facul- 
ties crowd against their prison-walls, and crowd them 
down ; and- then the soul is in conscious relations with 
a new world, and a new order of beings, with an or- 
ganism unimpeded for new employments. It is the 
third stage of its progress; not decay merely, but 
decay in order to growth; not death only, but death 
for the sake of birth ; not ceasing to live, but ceasing 
to be mortal. It is the heavenly birth, for it is the 
heavenly mind put in symmetry with a heavenly 
body with which to range among the objects of a 
heavenly world. 

Such is the death wdiich God ordains ; and it seems 
strange to us, that the theologians are so fond of rep- 
resenting that he introduced it into the world as a 
penal calamity. It is a stage in human progress to 
be passed as we would pass from childhood to youth 
or from youth to manhood, and W'ith the sanae con- 
sciousness of an ever-unfoldino; nature. And under 
healthful conditions as peacefully too ; for our souls 
would be full of the future, ever waiting to break 
into new life, but never thinking of death and decay. 
Immortality would not come upon us by surprise, but 
as manhood comes upon youth, as childhood comes 



74 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



upon iu&ncy^ or as clay comes u])on the darkness, 
melting away the bars of night in soft surges of 
golden fire. As the heavenly nature was unfolded, 
the earthly nature would fall away of itself, and so 
we should grow into our immortality; for the man 
w^ould grow into the angel, as the infant grows into 
the child. 

Death thus conceived of does not imply disease, 
but superabundant health. How pleasing the sight ! 
— the o^enerations folio win 2; each other in unbroken 
ranks, youth treading on the steps of manhood, and 
manhood on the steps of age, no foe lurking in am- 
bush to thin their ranks, and strew the way with the 
corpses of the young, but all moving on in charmed 
numbers to where the ranks of age disappear to- 
gether, melting out of sight over the summits of the 
hill, their locks tinged and their features kindled in a 
light that streams from the country beyond. - 



CHAPTER IX. 



DEATH^ AS MAX MAKES IT. 

From data which are precise and unmistakable, 
certain naturalists undertake to interpret the Divine 
plan in regard to the length of human life. From 
signs impressed on our animal machinery, they think 
thev ascertain exactly how long it was intended to 
continue. It is so wound up as to go a certain length 
of time, and then stop, — a chronometer which will 
measure off truly a certain lapse of years, unless you 
derange and break it. By the aid of comparative 
anatomy, and from a careful collection of facts, they 
deduce the principle that all animal natures are de- 
signed to continue five times longer than they grow. 
Hence the allotted period of all inferior orders is 
ascertained. Take five times their period of grow^th, 
and you have the length of life allowed to any given 
species, — the years for which the timepiece is con- 
ditioned and w^ound up. The period of growth is 
ascertained from the fact, that, wdien it ceases, a cer- 
tain change takes place in the anatomical structure, 
known to naturalists as " the union of the bones to 
their epiphyses." The period of man's growth is 
just twenty years, and therefore his animal economy 
was distinctly planned to continue a century before it 
stops. One hundred years, and not threescore and 

75 



76 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



ten, say these Avriters, is the natural age of man. 
There are individual variations and exceptions, but 
in none does it fall short of ninety years. If some 
men live beyond the hundredth, it is because the 
period of growth was unusually prolonged, or be- 
cause of extraordinary prudence or constitutional 
strength. The actual average length of human life, 
however, is less than forty years, and therefore these 
naturalists will have it that the race generally do not 
simply die, but rather kill themselves. The plan of 
the Creator is thwarted; we do not let the timepiece 
run dow^n, but break the chain or smash the wheels 
in pieces.* 

That part of our complex natures which we have 
in common with the animals, by which we hold rela- 
tions with the outward world, and the cessation of 
Avhose functions we call death, was designed then to 
continue a century, and stop of itself, and without 
disease, cast off as the coverings of the chrysalis when 
they are needed no more. Diseases are a gang of 
foreign invaders which have broken into the house 
of life, or rather which have come in through the 
rents that the inmates themselves had made. And so 
death, which would only have come gentJy to cleave 
away our effete coverings without pain or disorder, 
comes now with a company of butchers, who not only 
remove the coverings, but stab our persons with sav- 
age ferocity. Set going for one hundred years, and 

* These principles have been deduced by BufFon, and with more 
precision by his commentator, M. Flonrens, in a book which has 
recently awakened much attention in Paris, — De la Longevite Hu- 
maine et de la Quantite de Vie sur la Globe, — reviewed in Black- 
wood's Magazine, May, 1855. 



DEATH, AS MAX MAKES IT. 



77 



stoj^piiig at forty ! Yrhat a fearful view of the rav- 
ages of sin have we here presented in the slaughtered 
generations ! Vie think, however, tliat something 
more will be needed than new rules of reo^imeu and 
dietetics, important as these are, to disarm death alto- 
gether, and make it the condition of health alone. 
The evils of hereditary disorder the naturalists take 
little account of, — the deep-lurking spiritual damage 
which we receive from ancestry and transmit to off- 
spring, and v\'hich has much to do in breaking up the 
orderly ongoings of our animal machinery. 

Death, as we make it, has two sources of terror, 
one physical, one moral. Y"e dread it as a physical 
evil, because it is the consummation of disease, and 
therefore of suffering. Eeason about it as we niay, 
when we see youth and childhood and helpless in- 
fancy writhing in its grasp, we cannot avoid the con- 
clusion, that some great disturbance has been thrown 
in upon us, reversing the order of nature, sending 
parents to bury the children, instead of the children 
the parents, making them live an inverted life, as 
Burke says, and putting posterity in the place of 
ancestors. This is overruled for good, as all evil is, 
and economized in the plan of our regeneration. But 
not less are we impressed with the fact that death, as 
we see it, is disorderly, and that it has "^^^ssed upon 
all men" as a consequence of sin. 

But even so, the dread of it may be removed from 
our minds by moral and spiritual causes. We easily 
learn to triumph over physical sufPering, and even to 
rejoice in it. When we see only the naked fact, it 
subdues and crushes us. AYhen we see beyond the 

7 * 



78 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



naked fact, and the end to which we can turn it, we 
rise elastic above it, and look clown and smile upon 
it. To a faith whose eye is open and clear, death, 
even as we experience it, is a struggle out of disor- 
der into light and fruition. If our relations to the 
spirit- world are rightly felt and apprehended, death, 
even though it come through disease and suffering, 
and reverse the order of natural succession, is yet an 
inferior evil, and our victory over it is made complete. 
It is only when man becomes buried in sense, and his 
faith only traditional, and wdien, therefore, to lose his 
foothold on the earth is to plunge into darkness, that 
he cowers before the approach of the Destroyer. 

It is constantly assumed by the theologians, that 
death is a consequence of the fall, and essentially evil, 
— that man as originally created would have been im- 
mortal upon the earth. It is evident from two reasons 
that this is not so. It is not so for the reason already 
given, that a period is at length reached when man, 
as a progressive being, needs a higher than a physical 
organization. It is not so, because the wwk ascribed 
to Christ is commensurate wnth the evil doings of sin. 
One is set off against the other. He came to abol- 
ish death," — the death which Adam introduced. As 
in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
alive." The antithesis is complete. All the death 
that Adam brought in, Christ will thrust out, ere his 
work is consummated. But he does not abolish the 
fact of dissolution, or make man immortal on the 
earth. He abolishes all the evil that there is in the 
mortality of our animal structure. He makes the 



DEATH^ AS MAX MAKES IT. 



79 



process a healthful instead of a diseased one, and so 
restores it from what man made it to what God or- 
dained it. This he does in two ways. He restores 
our spiritual natures to heavenly order, transfusing 
them with his own life and health, and purging them 
of ail acquired or hereditary evil, and thence life and 
health spread through our animal frames, restoring 
them to a unison with divine laws. The inward 
nature in time transmutes the outward one, and will 
make it its befitting body and drapery, when not only 
individual but humanitary regeneration is complete. 
And again, as we shall see more fully in what follows, 
Christ brings the realm of immortality distinctly 
within the range of the eye of faith, making this life 
and the next one continuous, so that, to man as he essen- 
tially is, death is banished from the view and is no 
more. 

Under whatever conditions it occurs, whether dis- 
eased or healthful, we cannot mistake the nature of 
mortal change. It is closing one set of perceptions, 
after man is to use them no longer. It is abolishing 
one set of relations, after the objects to which tliey 
bound us have accomplished all their intended work. 
Man may live in many worlds at once, but he can 
have open and conscious relations with only one at a 
time. He may live in many at once, for he has life 
concealed within life, and each world may act on the 
correspondent province of his being and put him in 
communion with it. But only one world is unveiled 
to him at a time and discloses its scenery, — that in 
which his present duty lies. He may attempt to 
break through and act in two at once, but when he 



80 



THE i:\IMOFcTAL LIFE. 



does^ confusion is the pretty sure result^ — tlie blend- 
ing of activities which do not harmonize together, 
and which may clash with awful and maddening dis- 
order. The veil which hangs between is the guard 
of an interposing and protecting mercy. If our 
course is indeed progressive, our walk through the 
mystic galleries of the universe is from the more out- 
ward to those more inward, where God in greater 
fullness dwells ; but we must close the doors after us 
as we go ! Death is the orderly and withal the beauti- 
ful method of traveling inward and upward through 
those degrees of existence whose wards unlock one 
after another toward the shining courts of the Eter- 
nal King. In that ascent it is a glorious privilege to 
die, to shut off the past when its ministries are clone. 
Death does this, and no more, when the duties of one 
department have been accomplished. It shuts off the 
fore-scene, that no fond longings may make us keep 
looking back, and reaching back with divided atten- 
tion. What can we do with our mind parted and qur 
affections cloven ? Death is shutting the door, shut- 
ting it on a pleasing retrospect it may be, on sweet 
and loving faces, on objects around which fond 
memories cling, on skies that smiled over our infancy, 
and led on the gay procession of our happy years ; 
but then another door opens higher upward through 
the solemn galleries ! 



CHAPTER X. 



THE RESUREECTIOX. 

There is a general acknowledgment among man- 
kind of such a connection of the present with the 
future as to necessitate some kind of retribution. We 
say that sin and suffering, goodness and enjoyment^ 
have the relation of cause and effect ; that if not in 
this life, yet in some other, we shall reap down the 
harvest which we sow. We need not say, however, 
to those who observe human conduct very closely, how 
much this doctrine is practically denied or evaded. 
It requires so little of special pleading for one to 
make his own case exceptional, and such abundant 
provisions to escape from it are supplied by artifi- 
cial theologies, that men do not, after all, regard this 
as an intrinsic law of spiritual existence. Those 
theoloo^ies do not make the resurrection of man a fact 
included under the operation of any law whatsoever, 
but a monstrosity thrust in among the orderly opera- 
tions of the Deity. They make it not only a miracle, 
but a miracle wrought mechanically, and not spir- 
itually. The idea of God coming down to the ceme- 
teries, and, potter-like, building up from their con- 
tents a set of human frames externally, and putting 
spirits into them afterward, is shocking enough, if we 
had not long ceased to be shocked by the fantasies of 

F 81 



82 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



religions naturalism. And it is not very strange that 
a conception, of which the human reason is so utterly 
intolerant, comes to have the feeblest influence on 
human conduct. 

But the pneumatology of the sacred writers brings 
home to us the doctrine of the resurrection in such 
wise as to give it the closest logical connection with 
the subject of retribution and the judgment-day. 
They do not make it a fact thrust in from without, 
and arbitrarily inserted between two dispensations. 
They make it the necessary result of the development 
of a divine law, whose workinsrs are brouo'ht home to 
US with such graphic delineations as almost to hinder 
us from sleep. By a careful collation of passage with 
passage, a truth rises upon us with harmonious rela- 
tions, and with features surpassingly bright and 
grand. We will call it the oeganic coxxectiox 

BETWEEN THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE, and 

we will endeavor to draw it out in as clear an illus- 
tration as it will bear. First we will develop the 
Scripture doctrine of the resurrection, and then we 
sliall see how it puts the present and future state in 
organic connection with each other. 

The time when the resurrection is to take place, and 
the nature of it, are the two points in our inquiry^. 
On the first, we shall not need to inquire long ; for 
the Saviour has made this point clear enough in his 
reasonings with the ]3seudo-rationalists of his day. 

Tlie Sadducees held that all of human existence 
was bounded between birth and death. They were 
gross materialists, believing in no future state, and 
thinking that the whole office of religion was to keep 



THE EESUERECTION. 



83 



this world in order. The Pharisees, on the other 
hand, believed in a doctrine of the resurrection, but 
they held it very much as it has been taught since, 
namely, as a resuscitation of dead bodies from the 
graves.* The Sadducees, knowing that Christ taught 
a doctrine of resurrection, and supposing it was the 
same as the Pharisees believed, for they were incapa- 
ble of conceiving of any other, came to him with 
what they thought were very puzzling questions. 
If the carnal body is to be raised again, they very 
naturally thought that its carnal relations must be 
revived and continued. There was a woman, said 
they, who had seven husbands successively, all of 
whom died, and the woman died after them. Now, 
then, ask the cavilers, ^'in the resurrection whose 
wife will she be of the seven 

Mark the answer : Do ye not err yourselves, be- 
cause ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of 
God ? For when they shall rise from the dead, they 
neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as 
the angels which are in heaven. And as touching 
the dead that they rise, liave ye not read in the book 
of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, say- 
ing, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? Pie is not the God of 
the dead, but of the living, for all [though dead to 
us] are alive to him."t 

You misconceive the true doctrine, he tells the cav- 

* This, however, they believed only in respect to the descend- 
ants of Abraham. For a view of their whole doctrine on this 
subject, see Part Third. 

t Mark xii. 18-27 ; Luke xx. 27-38. 



84 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



ilers^ in two particulars. You mistake the nature of 
the resurrection state. It is not a carnal one, but 
those who enter it become like the angels (o^c ayjeloL). 
You mistake the time of it, for the dead have risen 
already. The patriarchs are not in their graves, but 
living with God, as the language of Moses implies. 
It is perfectly clear that the whole pungency of his 
reply consists in the putting of these two points, — 
that the children of the resurrection " are absolved 
from all carnal conditions, and that the resurrection 
takes place at death, since with the patriarchs it is not 
an event in the uncertain future, but already trans- 
pired. 

He is confronted on another occasion with this same 
Pharisaic dogma, and in like manner he brushes it 
clean away. Over the grave of Lazarus, the sisters, 
who held the current Jewish doctrine, send their im- 
aginations down the dim future to a day when the 
body of their brother shall be revived. I know he 
shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.'^ 
Jesus replied, " I am the resurrection and the life ; 
he that belie veth in me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die.'^ I am the resurrection, and as 
well now as at any far-off future ; I can abolish death 
to him that puts his trust in me.* 

St. Paul has handled this subject philosophically, 
and undertaken to disclose something of the Divine 
method in the transition of man from sensuous to 
spiritual existence. We will not attempt here to give 
his whole thought, reserving that for a subject by 
John xi. 24-26. 



THE RESUERECTION. 



85 



itself. We will only give it so far forth as it bears 
upon our present theme. He spreads out this topic 
at large in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to 
the Corinthians. And the reader will please to ob- 
serve how he regards the Jewish dogma, — that the 
same bodies are to be raised which have been laid in 
the sepulchres. He rejects it somewhat more con- 
temptuously than Christ had done, for the man who 
could entertain such a notion he rather impatiently 
calls a fool. " Thou fool ! that which thou sowest is 
not quickened except it die ; and thou sowest not that 
body that is to be. Thou sowest grain merely ; per- 
haps wheat, perhaps some other grain. But God 
giveth it — the grain — a body as it hath pleased him, 
and to every seed his own body." The grain dies ; 
you see nothing more of that, but it contains the 
germ of a future body which rises out of it, and 
whose nature is according to the nature of the grain, 
since every seed puts forth its own germ, and not 
another's. He then goes on from this exquisitely 
fine analogy to construct the doctrine of man's resur- 
rection. He says there are two kinds of bodies ; one 
natural, one spiritual. The natural is the one that 
dies, like the kernel that perishes in the ground. 
The spiritual is the one that comes out of it, like the 
expanding blade which breaks from the decaying cap- 
sula that contained it. 

Herein he develops a doctrine much higher than 
the Jewish, and well calculated, not merely to touch 
our interest, but to seize the imagination and hold it 
captive. It is this, — that man's resurrection is the 
putting forth at death of new existence, just as the 

8 



86 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



decaying seed puts fortli the blade. Its decay is 
necessary in order to release the life and the beauty 
that were imprisoned within its foldings. Death and 
resurrection describe processes, one the inverse of the 
other, but the former helping on the latter and pre- 
paring its triumphant way. Our future being is in- 
souled and inurned in our present. The spiritual 
body is included elementally in our present mode of 
existence, with its perceptive powers all ready for 
their enlargement. The soul is not a metaphysical 
nothing, but a heavenly substance and organism, fold 
within fold. The material falls off, and the spiritual 
stands forth and fronts the objects and breathes the 
ethers of immortality. The future is wrapped up 
within us, and waiting to be unrolled. Death will 
not transfer us ; it will only remove a hindrance 
and a veil. We receive with our present being the 
germ of all that we are to become hereafter. The 
physical comes first in the order of development, 
forming a secure basis for all that is to follow, hold- 
ing it firm, and relaxing its compressure when its 
function is done. First that which is natural, after- 
ward that which is spiritual.'^ The death of the 
first is the falling away of exuvial matter, when the 
life of our life becomes manifest and the spiritual 
body unfolds all its powers. The worm that crawls 
upon the ground and prepares its own grave in which 
to wait for its coming transformation, yet bears on its 
unsightly form those very prominences which mark 
the places of gold and silver spangles on the wings 
of the released and soaring insect. The lines of 
Kogers To the Butterfly," with the alteration of a 



THE RESURRECTION. 



87 



single word, are a fitting and brief summing up of 
the doctrine of Paul : — 

" Child of the sun ! pursue thy rapturous flight, 
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light, 
And where the flowers of Paradise unfold, 
Quaflf fragrant nectar from their cups of gold. 
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky, 
Expand and shut, in silent ecstasy ; — 
Yet wert thou once a worm, — a thing that crept 
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept. 
And such is man, — soon from this cell of clay 
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day." 

Such is the primary and essential doctrine of the 
resurrection. We by no means claim that we have 
yet given the whole idea which that word is often 
made to represent, especially as it occurs in the writ- 
ings of St. Paul. It means, essentially, the immortal 
man breaking from the carnal investitures of earth, 
and thence standing up on a higher platform of exist- 
ence, and having open relations therewith. Applied 
specially to the people of Christ, it includes the auspi- 
cious results involved or presupposed ; and what these 
are in the spiritual philosophy of St. Paul we will 
endeavor to . show when that theme comes in order 
before us. 

There is nothing in the teachings of the Saviour 
which is not in the severest harmony with the doc- 
trine here evolved, unless we adopt the literal inter- 
pretation of John V. 28, 29 : Marvel not at this, for 
the hour is coming in the which all that are in the 
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they 
that have done good, to the resurrection of life, and 
they that have done evil, to the resurrection of judg- 



88 



THE IIMMOETAL LIFE. 



ment (>y^/(7S(^c)." But tlie literal sense implies noth- 
ing short of annihilation. All Avho are in the 
graves.'^ The pronoun refers to persons, not bodies. 
If not only the body is buried, but the person also 
who wore it, then all of man is deposited there; and 
Priestley and the materialists are right, who make the 
soul only a function of matter, and there is a period 
of total annihilation till the function is restored. 
That this is not the teaching of the Divine Master, 
we have already seen. That the passage does not 
mean this, vv^e think is obvious enough : what it does 
mean will be seen in a subsequent chapter. 



CHAPTER XI.. 



OEGANIC CONNECTION OF THE PEESENT AND THE 
FUTURE LIFE. 

The law of retribution involved in Paul's doctrine 
of the resurrection becomes obvious enough. Within 
the concealments and envelopments of this material 
body is the inmost indestructible spiritual life, the 
real and immortal man, ready to emerge in its own 
form; and it does emerge at death, just as the flower 
emerges from the seed that dies. But ^' to every seed 
its own body.'' Every seed has its own specific life, 
and the form in which it comes forth is the outgoing 
of that life, — is its own body and configuration. All 
living forms, whether natural or spiritual, are the 
outgrowth of an internal principle, seeking to shape 
itself for the functions it has to perform. All growth 
and enlargement are the effort of this principle to act 
and be manifest, and the decay of the outward is 
simply the falling aw^ay of that which was a clog to 
its action and manifestation. In the natural world it 
is this organific principle of life at the centre of all 
living forms, arranging to its own end the particles 
that enter into them, and giving them figure and 
coloring, that spreads out the scenery of woods and 
plains. That principle may be bad and noxious, or it 
may be good and beneficent. If the former, you 

8 * 89 



90 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



have the Upas of the desert and the nightshade of 
the jungles ; if the latter, you have the vineyards, 
and the olive-o-roves, and the exhaling^ sweetness of 
gardens. Precisely the same agglomeration of parti- 
cles might make up the one as the other ; and yet 
vastly different ^bodies shall be the result, according 
to the life principle that gathers and combines them 
around itself. The human body is no exception, and 
it is always the creation of the plastic life within. It 
is not because man's body clifiPers vastly from the 
brute's in the elements that enter into it, that one is 
human and the other bestial. It is because the life 
^vithin the one is human, and the life within the other 
is bestial. And just in that degree that man makes 
his life-principle bestial and not human, does his form 
become brutalized also in the progress of generations. 
Man was created in the image of God, and therefore 
wlien that image is preserved, or restored after being 
lost, the human form is the noble configuration of 
what is heavenly and divine. When that image is 
darkened or lost within, the human form sinks away 
toward brutal deformity, or is changed into the figure 
of clemoniziiig passions; — not in one generation, it 
may be, for matter is gross and inert ; but it surely 
yields at length to the plastic power of spirit. 
Humanity, even here on the earth, presents you the 
ascending scale, — man rising and becoming trans- 
figured into the form of angelic life and glory ; or the 
descending scale, — man sinking away from humanity, 
till he becomes transformed into the image of his own 
lusts, and grows into the demon likeness of his own 
cruelties. Can any one who thinks rationally suppose 



THE PEESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 91 



that this law is suspended at death ? Yea^ can he 
doubt that a law which works so slowly upon gross 
matter shall work more quickly and completely on 
spiritual substance, in which form and figure are sub- 
ject to spiritual law, and not natural ? We get here, 
then, the clearest furegleams of this organic principle 
of retribution. Every man is cherishing that inmost 
and indestructible life which death cannot touch, and 
which constitutes the elements of all that he is to be. 
The inward man emerges the very image and carving 
of the sin he has practiced and loved, or the image 
of the Christ who has been formed within him to 
create him anew. It is only the same principle acting 
in a higher degree, that underlies all growths, decays, 
and resurrections. It is the peculiar life^ working 
not from without inward, but from within outward, 
and taking form, v/hich causes the changes that occur 
in this boundless sea of being, v/ith all its ebb and 
flow. " God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, 
and to every seed his own body." Not more true is 
it that a handful of acorns is prospectively the lofty 
and wide-waving forest, than any concourse of human 
beings, seen in the glass of prophecy, is prospectively 
the scenery of immortality, w^here waves a harvest of 
glory or a harvest of corruption. 

We are very glad to fortify our position by the 
authority of one whose intuitions on this class of sub- 
jects were remarkably deep and clear. Dr. Channing 
has left us a sermon on The Evil of Sin,'^ in which 
his crystalline style is even more than usually radiant 
with momentous truths. He saw too well the derang- 
ing and deforming nature of moral evil, to suppose 



92 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE, 



its workings were limited to the abstract qualities of 
the mind. He says : " In the present state^ we find 
that the mind has an immense power over the body, 
andj when diseased, often communicates disease to its 
sympathizing companion. I believe that in the fu- 
ture state the mind will have this power of conform- 
ing its outward frame to itself incomparably more 
than here. We must never forget that, in that 
world, mind or character is to exert an all-powerful 
sway ; and accordingly, it is rational to believe that 
the corrupt and deformed mind which wants moral 
goodness, or a spirit of concord with God and with 
the universe, will create for itself as its fit dwelling 
a deformed body, which will also want concord or 
harmony with all things around it. Suppose this to 
exist, and the whole creation which now amuses may 
become an instrument of suffering, fixing the soul 
with a more harrowing consciousness on itself. You 
know that even now, in consequence of certain de- 
rangements of the nervous system, the beautiful light 
gives acute pain, and sounds which once delighted us 
become shrill and distressing. How often this ex- 
cessive irritableness of the body has its origin in 
moral disorders, perhaps few of us suspect. I ap- 
prehend, indeed, that we should be all amazed were 
we to learn to what extent the body is continually 
incapacitated for enjoyment, and made susceptible of 
suffering, by the sins of the heart and life. Tliat 
delicate part of our organization on which sensibility, 
pain, and pleasure depend, is, I believe, peculiarly 
alive to the touch of moral evil. How easily, then, 
may the mind hereafter frame the future body accord- 



THE PEESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 93 



ing to itself, so that, in proportion to its vice, it will 
receive through its organs and senses impressions of 
gloom which it will feel to be the natural productions 
of its own depravity, and which will in this way give 
a terrible energy to conscience ! For myself, I see no 
need of a local hell for the sinner after death. When 
I reflect how, in the present world, a guilty mind has 
power to deform the countenance, to undermine health, 
to poison pleasure, to darken the fairest scenes of na- 
ture, to turn prosperity into a curse, I can easily un- 
derstand how, in the world to come, sin, working with- 
out obstruction according to its own nature, should 
spread the gloom of a dungeon over the whole cre- 
ation, and, wherever it goes, should turn the universe 
into a hell."* 

In what province of the universe, in what grade 
of existence, from the violet up to the angel, do we 
find, or have any reason to believe, that bodies are 
built up mechanically for future occupants? Ever 
and everywhere body is the creation of life, and is 
the conformation of its instincts and affections. These 
shape the tissues and members which they are to use 
afterward, from the first embryonic pulse-beat to the 
last development of the full-grown form. The in- 
stinct of the plant is different from that of the ani- 
mal, because its function is different, and through 
the all-inspiring Intelligence it moulds a body to 

■ "Works, Vol. IV. pp. 164-166. Dr. Channing, in this sermon, 
recognizes the truth that the spirit at death is to continue em- 
bodied. He speaks, however, of the future body as material," 
perhaps because his attention was not called distinctly to the dif- 
ference between natural and spiritual body, or because he was not 
aiming at philosophic precision of statement. 



9i 



THE IM:,rORTAL LIFE. 



itself throu2:li which to do its office ; and so the 
green and serried ranks on hill and plain come forth 
and accomplish their work in the grand economy. 
The wolf is to prowl the forest for prej; the instinct 
is in the first drop of blood that rolls out of the heart 
to the extremities,— the living conatus to form tusks 
and claws ; and the whole animal is built up, not by 
masonry from without, but by an organific power 
within, till he roams forth the effigy of the instinct 
that animates and rules him. The lark is to soar and 
sing, and the instinct sprouts forth in the wings that 
are to lift him up, and the pipes on which he is to 
play his tunes, and he flits through the gates of the 
da^vn the living embodiment of his own spirit of 
melody. Man has a complex nature ; yea, all the 
natures between God and the animal inclusive are 
abridged and folded up within him, — the whole range 
of instincts from animal up to angel. These put forth 
successively their serial leaves, the low^est or outermost 
first, then higher and yet higher; the animal body 
first, and the spiritual afterward ; the first falling 
away and making room for the next, until the man 
has grown into the angel. And in this life, unfold- 
ing serially upward, the organization by which it 
shall be manifest and do its work is created from 
within ; from the infant that hangs on the breast, to 
the seraj)h " white with gazing on the throne," and 
swift on the errands of eternal mercy. 

We come to understand the sharp significance of a 
large class of Scripture passages, which otherwise we 
apprehend but dimly or not at all, — those, we mean, 
W'hich describe the scenery of another life. What are 



THE PEESEXT AXD THE FUTURE LIFE. 95 



heaven and hell but man opened? AYhat are the 
celestial forms of the one, but the Divine Life in man, 
disencumbered and flowering forth? What are the 
hideous shapes of the other, but the corrupt life in 
man, also disencumbered and flowering forth ? What 
are we to hope for in the one, but the Divine 
Life in us perfected and shown, and what are we to 
fear in the other, but the dark apocalypse — of our- 
selves ! 

In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians he has 
occasion to speak of the persecutions of the saints, 
and of his own afflictions ; but he learns to look upon 
these as of no moment, in view of the animating pros- 
pects of immortality. He calls the earthly body a 
tabernacle-house, to indicate how unsubstantial it is, 
and how soon to disappear. The spiritual body he 
calls the heavenly house, and declares it eternal,^' 
in contrast with the earthly. For we know that, if 
our earthly tabernacle-house were dissolved, we have 
a building of God, an house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens. For in this tabernacle-house 
we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with 
our heavenly body, our eternal building. For we 
shall indeed be found clothed upon by it at death, 
aiKl shall not be found naked, or denuded of all body 
whatever. . . . For we must all appear before the 
judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may bear 
away with him the contents of his natural body {za 
dia To'i) aojiiazo::), according to what he hath done, 
whether good or bad f — thus clearly setting forth 

* 2 Corinthians v. 1-10. We follow Bloomfield's rendering, in 
preference to Conybeare and Howson's. 



96 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



liis former doctrine^ that v/hen this earthly body dis- 
appears, like a tent pitched transiently upon the plain 
by the passing traveler, it will only yield up the 
spiritual man, not naked, but indued with an eternal 
organization. 

And there is a kindred passage in the Apocalypse 
which is crowded and packed with meaning : I saw 
the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the 
books were opened; and another book was opened 
wdiich is the book of life; and every man was judged 
by those things which were written in the books, ac- 
cording to their works.'^ We are not claiming that 
this passage proves our doctrine. We only note in 
passing the bold relief with which its meaning stands 
out when the doctrine interprets it. That the book 
of man's life is none other than the secret principle of 
his own affections, thoughts, and actions, we hope does 
not need any proving; and this book must indeed be 
opened when that principle is imaged forth in the 
body that clothes it. The immortal life bursting 
from its mortal coverings reveals the angel from 
within if he be there, or reveals and releases the 
demon so far as demon principles rule in any man's 
breast. And this by no arbitrary appointment, but 
in consequence of an essential organic connection be- 
tween the present and the future world. It is not 
entering upon a new state, but the intensification of 
all that man essentially is. How the secrets of all 
hearts are to be revealed, how there is nothing covered 
that shall not be known, becomes obvious from the 
tendency in all living organisms to put forth into 
their own foliage and fruitage, whether natural or 



THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 97 



moral, and thus produce the bane of the wilderness 
or the bloom and the beauty of Eden, 

We have heard much of the dignity of human 
nature, and its glorious possibilities; but all our 
pompous phraseology does not indicate the future 
that waits within us. This gross, material state of 
being was designed doubtless to be to us a protection 
and a guard. This dim and sleepy life is induced 
upon us that we may not know at the beginning all 
that we are. We could not bear the intense work- 
ings of our inmost being if it all came into our con- 
sciousness at once; and therefore this muddy vesture 
of decay is made to close it in, in order to dull it and 
to dim it. But we get even now intimations and 
fore-gleams of what it is. Sometimes physical laws 
are insanely broken through, so as no longer to con- 
ceal a disordered spiritual action, as if the soul were 
working itself free of matter, and the secret books were 
opening ; and then we see realized an untold capability 
for suffering, which makes us tremble to think what 
possibilities are within us and bide their time. And 
there are seasons, too, when the sanctified spirit seems 
free of the clogs of earth; when, as Wordsworth says, 
the weary weight of all this unintelligible world is 
lightened f and then she becomes conscious of a being 
that is not of earth, and that gives some idea of the 
angelic bliss and the peace supreme. While yet the 
animal body enfolds him, man in his deepest expe- 
rience neither enjoys nor suffers like an animal. 
There is an unearthly melody in his song, and some- 
thing more than mortal mingles in his wail. Then 
we partly apprehend the truth that the celestial and 
9 G 



98 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



infernal scene-sliowiiia: of tlie Bible is oolv man un- 
covered and produced, and that this vesture of decay 
folds him in, in order to hide him from himself. 

Our subject unfolds in a most practical way, and 
comes home to all our business and bosoms. We see 
in the light of it how vain are the decorations and 
shows of life, any further than they manifest a life 
that is beautiful within. Here, we can conceal the 
deformity of a perverted and selfish nature amid the 
convenient seemings of society. We can make .the 
body in some sort flexile to our purposes ; we can put 
on a fair outward morality, and make our deeds look 
handsome for the praise of men. But the moment 
death touches us, we begin to change, as did the fiend 
in the garden at the touch of the angel. Our show- 
work falls away, our true self appears, taking body 
and form according to its quality, and grows into the 
very ef&gy of its ruling hatreds and loves. 

We come to apprehend, with more sharp distinct- 
ness, the importance of our connection with Christ as 
the ^^resurrection and the life," and our faith in him 
as the Redeemer of our fallen humanity. He came, 
not simply to develop humanity, but to create it 
anew ; to put a fresh organific force at the centre, that 
all its workings and shapings outward may be heav- 
enly and beautiful. He came to place his image 
within us, that death might only disclose his likeness 
and handiwork. Yv^e grow into the image of v/hat 
we love ; and if Christ be received into our affections, 
we shall grow from within outward into his likeness, 
who, as Paul says, shall change our vile body that 
it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body. 



THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 99 



according to the \YorkiDg wliereby lie is able to subdue 
all thiugs unto himself." 

We think^ too, it appears that our self-examinations 
ought to be somewhat more deep and thorough than 
self-examinations are wont to be. They ought to go 
deeper tlian our creeds and doctrines, since these can 
have no saving potency any further than they go to 
purify our life of life. If our connection Vvith the 
future world is not arbitrary, but organic, then how 
clear is it that our faith saves us only as it regenerates 
our hearts and gives us cleansed affections. If heaven 
and hell are man opened and intensified, llien there 
is no salvation by verbal covenants and appointments, 
by ecclesiastical imputations or substitutions. By the 
all-plastic law at the centre of our being, by all the 
realities bound up and waiting within us, by the open- 
ings into immortality through the veil which the 
Gospel withdraws, by all the divine science of man, 
we know that, when this coil of mortality is unwound 
from us, it will only disclose us just as we are, that 
our inmost self may be figured forth into the demon 
or the angel. 

An old vv^riter hath said : " To those to \vhose im- 
agination it has ever been j^resented, how beautiful is 
the countenance of justice and wisdom, and neither 
the mornino; nor the evenino;: star is so fair. For in 
order to direct the view aright, it behooves that the 
beholder should have made himself congenerous and 
similar to the object beheld. Never could the eye 
have beheld the sun, had not its own essence been 
soli form, — preconfigured to light by a similarity of 
essence to that of light. Keither can a soul not 



100 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



beautiful within attain to an intuition and enjoyment 
of beauty." On this principle it is that the soul 
seeks its like^ and is formed into the image of its own 
essential loye ; so that, when external things haye 
passed away, and she gazes on the face of her Beloyed, 
she will spring toward him on the wings of a more 
swift affection, and the promise of the Master shall 
be fulfilled, " I will raise him up at the last day." 
She will gaze on the sun because her eye has become 
soliform, — gaze openly on the glorious countenance 
of Truth in its Source, and the morning or the eyen- 
ing star is not so fair. 



CHAPTEE XII 



TI-IE JUDGMEXT-DAY 

Ax old Catechism familiar to our child liood has 
this question and answer : What will be done at the 
last day? The bodies of all mankind will be raised, 
the earth will be burned up, and the final judgment 
will take place/^ 

If the material universe is not self-existent, it 
follows of necessity that it lives only because God 
lives in it, forming the inmost principle whence all 
its phenomenal glories are evolved. The act of crea- 
tion, then, did not cease at the beginning, but is pro- 
longed and perpetual. Let it be suspended, and the 
firmaments roll up and vanish away. The idea of 
the universe as a building which stands of itself, 
which God put up carpenter-fashion, and which some 
day he will batter down and destroy, is about as 
puerile as any of the conceptions of religious natural- 
ism. Nature is not a mechanism, but a creation ; on 
the lowest plane of existence its myriad forms are an 
efflorescence out of the life of God. "What, then, 
would it be for God to destroy nature? It would 
simply be to suspend the creative act. It would not 
be followed by the wreck of matter and the crash of 
worlds, but by universal and total silence. It would 
not be to put forth his povrer, but to hold it in. 

9 * Uil 



102 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



There would not be a conflagration^ but a blank ; as 
Isaac Taylor puts it, not a destruction, but a rest ; 
not a crash and a ruin, but a pause.'' 

Our Saviour speaks of the end of the world, and 
of a judgment-day; and a careful attention to the 
subject will show that it is not a judgment arbi- 
trarily imposed, but one which results from the essen- 
tial laws of existence. 

One of the most impressive of our Lord's parables 
is that of the wheat and the tares, found recorded in 
the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. The tares w^ere a 
species of darnel whose blade resembled very much 
that of the wheat, but the fruit of which w^as totally 
different in quality. The Divine Teacher thus ex- 
pounds his own analogy : The field is the natural 
world; the good seed are the children of the king- 
dom, but the tares are the children of wickedness. 
The enemy that sowed them is the devil, the harvest 
is the end of this time, and the reapers are the angels. 
As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the 
fire, so shall it be at the end of this time. The Son 
of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall 
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and 
those w^ho do iniquity, and shall cast them into a fur- 
nace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of 
teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the 
sun in the kingdom of their Father." 

Two Greek words [xoafio:: and ahov) are rendered 
in the common English version by the same w^ord, 
namely, world." Only the former, however, is ever 
employed to denote this material structure, and the 
latter is uniformly employed to denote a period or 



THE JUDGMENT-DAY. 



103 



dispensation. In every instance wLei-e the phrase 
" the end of the world " occurs, the word is alcov, or 
period, and cannot possibly be made to mean the 
economy of material things. The scene of the judg- 
ment, then, is not here in the natural degree of life, 
and at the end of the natural world ; rather it is at 
the end of this period of natural life, after we have 
done with time, and our relations to this material 
scene have to come to a close ; agreeably to the lan- 
guage of the writer to the Hebrews, " It is appointed 
unto men once to die, and after this the judguient." 

When we use the word judgment, we ought care- 
fully to distinguish , between the accidental concomi- 
tants which the word suggests as a judicial term, and 
the essential meaning of the word itself. The Greek 
original is xpiac^ ; and the meaning which lies at the 
heart of it is very nearly the same as that of the Eng- 
lish Avord which comes immediately from it. It means 
A CRISIS. It comes from a verb which signifies to 
distinguish and to separate. It is the crisis made by 
the separation of the elements of moral good and 
moral evil. And in the Christian revelation, it is a 
crisis and separation which takes place as a conse- 
quence of the resurrection. 

This is invariably the Divine order, — first the resur- 
rection, and then the judgment; and if the reader has 
a clear conception of what the resurrection is, he is in 
a fair way to see how this must be according to the 
eternal laws of being. This we will endeavor to 
illustrate. 

We have read somewhere of a number of individuals 
who broke away from their old ties and hearth-stones, 



104 THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 

went into a new country, and formed themselves into 
a new community. Tiiey had an itleal of a perfect 
form of society, and this ideal they expected to reduce 
to its realizations. Their external wants and tastes 
and interests were similar. They had the same no- 
tions about property, about labor, about almost every- 
thing that pertains to the outward life, and so they 
expected to o^^en a terrestrial paradise in the wilder- 
ness. For a while everything went on charmingly 
well. The little community grew into an organiza- 
tion of fair proportions and harmonious workings. It 
Vv-as not long, however, before it began to be manifest 
that man has an internal life as well as external, and 
that this, in the long run, is the more dominant of the 
two. And they found, when brought into close rela- 
tions with each other, that this internal life sliowed 
itself by little and little, and that no considerations 
of prudence and expediency could cover it up. By 
and by there Avere conflicts of self with self; opinion 
jarred against opinion, and interest clashed against " 
interest; truth and falsehood met together, and did 
by no means kiss each other ; the secret heart of this 
person and that began to be opened and to be mu- 
tually repellent, and the divers elements of the little 
community were in a general fermentation and whirl. 
It was quite evident, that, though this might be a 
good arrangement of body Avith body, it Avas a decided 
mal- arrangement of spirit Avith spirit. The pressure 
of spiritual affinities and repulsions from AA^thin be- 
came greater and greater, and the result AA^as that the 
wdiole society broke in pieces, each Avent to his OAAm 



THE JUDGMEXT-DAY. 



105 



place^ and left the prairie-wolf to prowl over the place 
of his imagined Paradise. 

So it is. We have illustrated here the twofold re- 
lations that bind ns, the wheat and the tares Q;rowino' 
together until the harvest. There are the relations 
which grow out of material and bodily interests, and 
bring together souls in their nature repellent. There 
is also illustrated here the manner in which the lower 
interests — these bodies and their wants — for a time 
overlay and bury up our spiritual tendencies and 
affinities, so that the real man is more or less shut in 
and concealed beneath material forms and pursuits. 
We see, too, the effort, even now, of the inmost life to 
come forth and become dominant, ai^d break up all 
affinities growing out of the mere external man. 

But the resurrection is the emergence of the im- 
mortal man out of the natural body, and the con- 
sequent abnegation of all its arbitrary relations. And 
the spiritual body in which he emerges is, in the very 
nature of things, the form and exponent of his in- 
ward life. Hence the broad and inevitable dis- 
closures of the other world. Hence, again, the new 
law according to which the whole mass of humanity 
at that point breaks up and parts asunder. It is ap- 
pointed unto men once to die, and after this the crisis^ 
or the parting asunder of good and evil. 

There are two principles which reign over human 
nature, and under all forms of religion and of morals 
are always shaping it to their moulds and affinities. 
One is self-love, always the same in its cjuality, though 
multiform in its pursuits ; essentially corrupt, though 
concealed sometimes under thin and fair disguises; 



106 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



always having the internal quality of the tares, though 
sometimes resembling the wheat in the color and con- 
tour of its leaves and flowers. The other is the Di- 
vine love, or self-devotion to the Divine law; not 
always ruling even the good man with an unmixed 
motive, but always shaping his inmost being into a 
more perfect image of the Divine Original, and under 
the hardest and roughest exterior unfolding the angel 
form from within. It is these which death uncovers 
and releases ; it is these which the resurrection brings 
forth in demon shape or angel form, and so develops 
out of a redeemed or perverted humanity either heaven 
or hell. 

The resurrection of necessity brings forth the in- 
most life, and configures it cleared of all > deceptive 
appearances. Hence the aspect of Truth and Good- 
ness rises majestic and unclouded in contrast with 
that of moral evil, and hence "the great gulf fixed," 
that yawns and deepens between them ; on one side 
tlie paths that lead up the terraced mountain of the 
Lord ; on the other, the caverns and the pitfalls and 
the deeps that exclude the day. These are solemn 
reflections, and we are on ground where we fear to 
tread with sandaled feet, while we look up through 
the resplendent ethers above, or down through the 
awful abysses below. 

It does not follow by any means that this separa- 
tion will take place instantly at death, or that each 
one's essential life will be instantly manifest. The 
Divine laws work no violent and eruptive changes, 
and for that reason they are sure of their final results. 
How manifold are the concealments of the real man 



THE JUDGMENT-DAY. 



107 



within us^ not only under material interests^ but un- 
der cliurch sanctities, under the comities of intercourse, 
under artificial and mock moralities ! The resurrec- 
tion places us in a state of being where these must all 
disappear^ where that which Ave only seem to have will 
be taken from us, where w^hat we essentially are will 
take its correspondent form ; and we will now see if 
stupendous agencies are not revealed, adapted to 
hasten on the catastrophe. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



CHRIST AS THE JUDGE. 

All ihrongh the Xew Testament we meet with the 
prediction that Christ should come a second time^ and 
come in judgment at the consummation of things. 
The resurrection, the judgment, and the second com- 
ing are events which are described as closely consecu- 
tive, sometimes under imagery of overwhelming sub- 
limity. In the twenty- fifth chapter of Matthew, 
wdaich is only a portion of one great prophecy, — the 
last utterance from the heights of Olivet, with Jeru- 
salem, the doomed city, lying under his eye, — the 
Saviour looks down the eternal perspective and de- 
scribes the last act of the drama, — the grand crisis 
of humanity. The Son of Man is to come in his 
glory, and sit upon the throne of his glory; all na- 
tions shall gather before him as a mighty multitude, 
and part to the right and left as if cleft in twain and 
separated in the brightness of his coming. Substan- 
tially the same prediction is recorded by John, though 
made under different circumstances, and with feelings 
of unspeakable tenderness. In those divine discours- 
ings wdiich followed the last supper, wdien Christ in 
person was to be separated from his disciples, he 
promises to come to them again. I will come and 
receive you unto myself I will not leave you 

lOS 



CHRIST AS THE JUDGE. 



109 



comfortless^ I will come to you." This second com- 
ing he describes in the context as that of the Spirit 
of truth which the Father would send through him 
out of his glorified state, and which should be the 
Comforter to his disciples, but which at the same time 
should be the Judge of the world. If I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if 
I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he 
is come, he will reprove the loorld of sin, of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment.'^ * 

In collateral and illustrative passages we have 
further intimations of the means and the process by 
w^hich Christ is to judge the world. It is not by an 
arbitrary or personal judgment. If any man hear 
my w^ords, and believe not, I judge him not; for I 
came not to judge the world (in person), but to save 
the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not 
my words, hath one that judgeth him : the Woed 
THAT I HAVE SPOKEX, the Same shall judge him in 
the last day."t 

Three dispensations are distinctly disclosed in the 
New Testament, as makiug up and completing the 
circle of redemption. Each following one grows out 
of the former, and is the fruit of it, and all together 
constitute Christianity in its organic completeness and 
grandeur. We have Christ the Teacher, Christ the 
CoMFORTEE, and Christ the Fi^s^al Judge, or the 
power that shall cleave the nations and peoples 
asunder. 

1. As a teacher he dwelt upon this earth, drew 

* John xiv. 3, 18 ; xvi. 7, 8. f Ibid. xii. 47, 48. 

10 



110 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



disciples around liimj lived out his life in the flesh, 
and thus embodied the system of Gospel truth in his 
words and actions. The record of this constitutes 
what we call historical Christianity. It was the 
golden future of tlie old patriarchs and prophets, to 
which they ever looked forward ; it is the golden past 
of the modern times, to which we ever turn back. 
There the heavens bent and kissed the plains ; there 
the Eternal Word came down and touched the earth, 
and clothed itself in flesh and in human language, and 
thence it darts its radiances backward and forward 
through the ages. But historical Christianity alone 
would have been powerless to move the world, for 
the simple reason that the world had sunk too low to 
understand it, or even to hear it. The words of the 
Divine Teacher lay dark and dead in the memories 
of his own disciples until after his ascension. The 
only tie that bound them to him was affection for his 
person and admiration of his works, and these would 
have soon passed away. 

2. But the dispensation of the Spirit followed. 
The whole work which Christ did on the earth was 
preparatory to another, a higher and more interior 
w^ork, which he was to accomplish afterward. He 
Avent away from the earth, that he might come nearer 
to it. He took up into his comprehensive experience 
all the weaknesses and woes of humanity, and then 
left them behind and ascended as the Glorified, — the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily, the Mediator out of 
whom God might pass over into humanity, and sweep 
it through, and create a new consciousness within it. 



CHRIST AS THE JUDGE. Ill 

Even thus Christ came anew as the Spirit of trnth, — 
came into the souls of his own disciples first^ vritli the 
rush of Pentecostal gales, making the dead truths in 
their memories to rise and live. But he came not 
thus to his own disciples alone. He came into the 
universal heart in the creation of a new conscience, 
and new susceptibilities for the Gospel. The Spirit 
of truth descending from the Glorified lav on the 
Jewish and Gentile mind as a mantle of light, send- 
ing its darts into the soul, and claiming to be obeyed. 
Before this influence Paul fell, and was converted. 
Before it the Gentile world woke to a consciousness 
of a new divine presence, and clmrches rose and mul- 
tiplied before historical Christianity had a record. 
Ever since, the incumbent Christ has rested on the 
mind of the nations, to be received or to be rejected, 
and on the mind of the Church, to make historical 
Christianity, not a dead letter, but a living and mov- 
ing power. 

Xor have we any reason to suppose that this dis- 
pensation of tlie Spirit of truth is confined to the 
earth alone. It was a universally received doctrine 
of the primitive Church, that the redeeming work .of 
Christ extended also to the spiritual world, and that 
the previous dead had the Gospel preached unto them 
also. The atrocious dogma, that men are to be damned 
eternally for not believing what they never heard of, 
had no fiivor, at least with many of them, and the 
words " He descended into hades," so far from being 
with them a meaningless formula, expressed their 
most vivid conception of the power of the Christian 
redemption. The accidents of birth and death cut 



112 



THE I^IMOKTAL LIFE. 



off no man, said tliey, from the benefits of the Gospel. 
The Spirit of truth, the Christianity descending from 
Christ out of heaven, came both to "the quick and 
to the dead/' — to multitudes iu the spiritual world, 
with whom the choice still lay between heaven and 
hell. In the Word speaking to them from within 
in a new awakened consciousness, and saying, " Re- 
ceive me or reject me, — choose ye this day which," 
Christ went and preached to " the spirits in prison 
that is, to those who died before his coming, but " had 
not yet ascended into heaven." And those who had 
not perverted or rejected the measure of light wliich 
they had before enjoyed, received gladly the Gospel 
when it came, so that not only from the earth, but 
out of hades also, Christ " went up with a shout,'' 
with throngs of the redeemed attending him. This, 
we say, was a doctrine of primitive Christianity; and 
it is pretty distinctly shadowed forth by more than one 
Christian Apostle. We shall return to it again, and 
we only name it here to show the power and com- 
prehensiveness of this doctrine of the mediatorial 
Christ, in the conceptions of the early believers. 

3. Two things are implied in the Gospel, laid as an 
incumbent law upon the conscience or the Spirit of 
truth from the nearer and more influent heavens. It 
is either a comforter or a condemner. If Avelcomed 
and received, our inmost natures are caught up and 
moulded into the moral image of Christ, until he 
lives within us, as our life, our righteousness, our 
unfailing peace. It is Christ formed within as the 
earnest of future glory. He becomes the central 



CHRIST AS THE JUDGE. 



113 



power of the spirit^ wlience he subdues all things 
unto himself, — the spiritual mind, and thence the 
spiritual body, with its robes of whiteness; so that 
when the natural body falls off, w^e rise to him by 
that unerring law of spiritual affinity whereby Christ 
seeks his own and draws them to himself. I will 
raise him up at the last day.'^ Christ, the subjective 
peace and truth and love, is seen also as the objective 
image of the Divine charms and glories, at whose 
feet the elders cast their crowns and cry, Worthy.'^ 

But Christ as the Eternal Word laid on the con- 
science, and not embraced and followed, comes only 
to condemn. Then the truth stands apart, and gleams 
portentously over the chaos within us. It shows both 
the heart and the life, in afflicting contrast with the 
Divine commandment; and it must be rejected as a 
light too intolerable to bear, and the mind in its cen- 
tral love and all its shapings thence is formed into 
the image of hell. 

It is perfectly clear, then, what must take place by 
the inevitable laws of being in the last day and in 
the spiritual world, — the gathering-place of souls. 
There divine truth, revealed in clearer and broader 
splendor from the bending heavens, gathers to itself 
all who have lived it and loved it ; and drives away 
from itself those who have rejected it, and who love 
it not, and therefore cannot bear it. To the former, 
the evening star is not so fair ; to the latter, no por- 
tents in the sky are so baleful ; and the Son of Man 
comino; out of the heavens in his all-revealino; o-lories 
would be the judgment and the judgment-day whereby 
the peoples would cleave asunder and sweep to their 
■ 10 « H 



114 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



o])posite poles. And hence Christ is everywhere 
spoken of in the New Testament as the judge of men. 
because, in his spiritual coming, he brings on the 
grand crisis of humanity. 

Turn now to the celebrated passage, John v. 28, 
29, and its meaning becomes abundantly clear : 
Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the 
which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice 
and shall come forth : they that have done good to 
the resurrection of life,jand they that have done evil 
to the resurrection of damnation.'^ The literal sense 
is, that the men themselves, not their bodies, are in 
the graves, and that Christ is to come and utter words 
over the turf that lies upon them, at which the sleepers 
shall wake up and come forth to judgment. No 
intelligent reader needs to be shown that this is a 
false interpretation. It cannot be taken in the literal 
sense. The ^Woice of the Son of Man'^ means his 
forth going truth coming in upon the soul. Those 
who are in the graves'' are those who, like the 
heathen, are locked in to their natural state of dark- 
ness, without light and w^ithout privilege. So the 
word is used in Ezekiel xxxvii. 12, "Behold, O my 
people, I will open your graves, and cause you to 
come up out of your graves." Those who have "done 
good," means those who have lived well the natural 
life, — the lowest plane of existence and the only one 
wdiicli has been opened to them ; and those who have 
"done evil" are those, on the other hand, who have 
lived an evil natural life. With this interpretation, 
listen now to the solemn enunciation which rings with 
marvelous clearness out of the skies. 



CHRIST AS THE JUDGE. 



115 



^^The time is coming, and now is, when the spir- 
itually dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, 
and they who were listening for it shall live. Marvel 
not at this, for the hour is coming when the whole 
world, now entombed in its darkness, shall hear the 
Gospel, and shall awake to it : those who have done 
good, to receive and welcome it and live in its reno- 
vating beams ; those who have done evil, to see the 
evil adjudged, and themselves condemned beneath its 
blaze.'^ 

AYe imbibe false and fantastic notions of the after- 
scene by losing sight of the fact that death does not 
abolish the principles of human nature, but rather 
sets them free ; and that, therefore, by knowing them 
here and now, we get the surest preconceptions of the 
things that shall be hereafter. The nature of the final 
judgment is often foreshadowed by the crises of the 
present life. In a mixed state of society, with all its 
clanging interests, Avhere the good and the bad have 
relations which run together and intertwine, we some- 
times see the cleaving power of truth to resolve com- 
munities, states, and empires into their elements. 
Purity and corruption, truth and error, may live for 
a while together. But in that state of things let God's 
trumpet be blown, and let the truth be applied sharply 
and cogently to the business of men ; let corruption 
be unroofed, and let the light be let in from above on 
the ghastly faces of its votaries. The elements are 
immediately astir, and there are commotions and 
earthquakes in divers places. Those who love the 
evil and the false, who live by it and profit by it, 
baud together more closely, gnash their tee'h against 



116 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



the coming liglit, and perhaps strive to put it out in 
blood. Those who h)ve truth and righteousness for 
their own sake, and for their beneficent influence, 
band together beneath them, and put on strength 
from their inspirations. Self and demonism muster 
their hosts on one side, God and humanity on the 
other, and the chasm yawns and deepens. And unless 
the evil is reformed, or unless the truth is crucified 
and put down, the final and inevitable catastrophe 
follows : they part asunder, one to the curse that 
cleaves to it and blasts it, the other to the unalloyed 
blessings of a purer and better state. So communi- 
ties and kino-doms have their crises throuo^h which 
they pass, sometimes to a loftier fruition, sometimes, 
as Judsea, Rome, and Carthage, to a darker and more 
dreadful doom. 

" Once to every man and nation comes tlie moment to decide, 
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side. 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom 
or blight, 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep uj)on the 
right. 

And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness and that 
light." 

We have only to suppose humanity to have passed 
onward into the spiritual realm, where artificial re- 
straints and relations are left behind, and God's 
angel-truths fall unclouded upon its opened senses, 
and we realize the full power of Christ's dramatic 
description, — the elect and non-elect gathered each to 
its own place, as on the wings of the wind. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



E Y E E L A S T I X G YOUTH. 

Old age in some of its aspects is a most interesting 
and solemn mystery^ and to the outward eye merely, 
is the gradual waning and extinction of existence. 
All the faculties fold themselves up to a long, last 
sleep. First, the senses begin to close, and lock in 
tlie soul from the outward world. The hearing is 
generally the first to fail, shutting ofP the mind from 
the tones of affection and the notes of melody. The 
sight fails next, and the imprints of beauty on the 
canvas hung round us by even and morn become 
blurred, and the doors and windows are shut toward 
the street. The invasion keeps on steadily toward 
the seat of life. The images of the memory lose their 
outliue, and run together, and at length melt away 
into darkness ; now and then you put forth a special 
effort, and make rents in the cloud, and see away 
through the green glades of other years ; but the edges 
of the cloud close again, and it settles down more 
dense than ever, and all the past is blotted out. Then 
the reason fails, and the truths it had elaborated 
flicker and die. Only the affections remain, happily 
if these too have not become soured or chilled. It is 
our belief, however, that these may be preserved in 
their primitive freshness and glow, and that in the 

117 



118 



THE IM?,IOP.TAL LIFE. 



old age where the work of regeneration is consum- 
mating the heart's love is always preserved sweet and 
bright, like a rose of Eden that occupies a charmed 
spot in the midst of snows. In old age men gene- 
rally seem to have grown better or worse. The 
reason is that then the internal life is more revealed, 
and its spontaneous workings are more fullv manifest. 
The intellectual powers no longer are vigilant to con- 
trol the expression of the internal feelings, and so the 
heart is generally laid open. AVhat we call the mo- 
roseness and peevishness of old age are none other 
than the real disposition, no longer hedged in and 
kept in decency by the intellect, but coming forth 
w^ithout disguise. So, again, the beautiful simplicity 
and infantile meekness, sometimes apparent in old 
age, beaming forth like the dawn of the coming 
heaven through all the relics of natural decay, are the 
spontaneous effusions of sanctified affections. There 
is, therefore, a good and a bad sense in which we 
speak of the second childhood. Childhood is the 
state of spontaneity. In the first, before the intellect 
is formed, the heart answers truly to all impressions 
from without, as the wind-harp ansvrers to the touch 
of the breeze. In the second, after the intellect is 
broken down, the same phenomenon comes round 
again, and in it you read the history of all the inter- 
vening years. What they have done for the regenera- 
tion of the soul will appear now that its inmost state 
is translucent, and concealed no more by intellectual 
prudence and expediencies. In the second childhood 
wdiich is true and genial, the w^ork of regeneration 
approaches its consummation, and the light of heaven 



EVERLASTING YOUTH. 



119 



is reflected from silver hairs, as if one stood nearer 
to Paradise and caught gleams of the resurrection 
glories. 

But alas ! is this all that is left of us amid the 
memorials of natural decay ? Sense, memory, reason, 
all blotted out in succession, and instinctive aifection 
left alone to its spontaneous workings, like a lone 
flower to breathe its fragrance upon the snows ? And 
how do we know but this, too, will close up its leaves 
and fall before the touch of the invader? and then 
the last remnant of the man is no more. Or if other- 
wise, is this the plight in which so many must enter 
upon their immortality, denuded of everything but 
the heart's inmost and rulins; love ? 

How specious and deceptive are natural appear- 
ances ! What seemed to the outward eye the waning 
of existence, and the loss of the faculties, is only 
locking them up successively, in order to keep them 
more secure. Old age, rather than death, answers 
strictly to the analogies of sleep. It is the gradual 
folding in and closing up of all the voluntary powers 
after they have become worn and tired, that they may 
wake again refreshed and renovated for the higher 
work that awaits them. The psychological evidence 
is pretty full and decisive that old age is sleep, but 
not decay. The reason remains though its eye is 
closed, and will some day give a more perfect and 
pliant form to the affections. The memory remains, 
though its function ceases for a while, and all its cham- 
bers may be exhumed, and their frescoes, like those 
of the buried temples of Meroe, will be found j^re- 
served in unfading colors. The whole record of our 



120 



THE IXAIOETAL LIFE. 



life is laid up wiiliiu us. and only the overlavino'S of 
the physical man prevent the record frum being 
always visible. The years leave their dtO/'i^ succes- 
sively upon the spiritual nature, till it seems buried 
and lost beneath. In the old man's memorv everv 
period seems to have obhterated a former one, but the 
life which he has lived successively can no more be 
lost to him or destroyed than the rock-strata can be 
destroyed by being btiried under layers of sand. In 
those hoiu\s when the bondage of the senses is less 
tirm. and the life within has freer motion, or in those 
hours of self-revelation which are sometimes experi- 
enced under a more pervading and biii^ning light from 
above, the past withdraws its veil, and we see rank 
beyond rank, as along the rows of an expanding 
amphitheatre, the images of successive years called 
cut as by some wand of enchantment. There are 
abimdant facts which go to prove that the decline and 
the forgetfulness of years are nothing more than the 
hardening of the mere envelopment of the man, thus 
shutting in and repressing the inmost life, which merely 
waits the hoiu' to break away from its bondage.'^ 

The resurrection is tlie exact inverse of natural 
decay, and the former is preparing ere the latter has 

^ Of this I am assured; that tliere is no sucli tning as forget- 
ting possible to the mind. A thousand circumstances may and 
■svill interjjose a veil between our present consciousness and the 
secret inscrij)tions of the mind, but alike whether veiled or un- 
veiled the inscription remains for ever ; just as the stars seem to 
withdraw from the common light of day, whereas we all know 
that it is the light wliich 1= drawn over them as a veil, and that 
they are waitmg to be revealed when the obscuring dayliglit shall 
hiive withdrawn." — De Qv.incey. 



EVERLASTIXG YOUTH. 



121 



ended. The affections, being the inmost life, are the 
nucleus of the ^vhole man, the creative and organific 
centre whence are formed the reason, the memory, 
and thence their embodiment in the more outward 
form of members and organs. The whole interior 
mechanism is complete in the chrysalis, ere the wings 
spotted with light are fluttering in the zephyrs of 
morning. St. Paul, who in this connection is speak- 
ing specially of the resurrection of the just, presents 
three distinct points of contrast between the natural 
body and the spiritual. One is weak, the other is 
strong. One is corruptible, the other incorruptible. 
One is without honor, the other is glorious. By say- 
ing that one is natural and the other spiritual, he cer- 
tainly implies that one is better adapted than the 
other to do the functions of spirit, and more perfectly 
to organize and manifest its powers. How clearly 
conceivable then is it, that, when man becomes free 
of the coverings of mere natural decay, he comes into 
complete possession of all that he is and all that he 
has ever lived ; that leaf after leaf in our whole book 
of life is opened backward, and all its words and 
letters come out with a more vivid blaze ! In the 
other life, therefore, appears the wonderful paradox, 
that the oldest people are the youngest. To grow in 
age is to come into everlasting youth, to become old 
in years is to put on the freshness of perpetual prime. 
We breathe the ethers of immortality, and drop from 
us the debris of the past, and our cheeks mantle with 
an eternal bloom. 
11 



CHAPTER XV. 



ETERNAL LIFE. 

Eternity and time^ or eternal things and tem- 
poral^ throughout the New Testament^ are placed in 
contrast. The reader discovers, with only a moderate 
degree of attention, that the former is not a continu- 
ation of the latter ; that eternity is not time extended 
on indefinitely, but that one differs generically from 
the other. Two worlds are ours, in both of which 
we live and have our being. One is almost as chang- 
ing as cloud-land, or as the scenery of a dream ; the 
things of the other are beyond the reach of accident 
or fluctuation. By our material bodies we are placed 
in connection with the former, by our interior natures 
with the latter, by our inmost souls with God himself, 
whence come the heart-beats of eternal life. 

By eternal life, the sacred writers mean a life in 
which the elements of time do not enter, a life whose 
infusions are out of an eternal state, and which, though 
overlaid by temporal conditions, is subject to none o£ 
their accidents and decays. The natural body moves 
about upon the earth, is subject to its laws, and some- 
times suffers beneath them ; but lifted up and sepa- 
rated," the inmost soul reclines on the Divine bosom, 
and smiles on the phenomena • of outward change. 
Hence eternal life is conditioned in the present, and 

122 



ETERNAL LIFE. 



123 



is a possession now and here. Tins is life eternal, 
that they might know thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.'' Whoso eat- 
eth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal 
life, and I will raise him up at the last day.'^ In 
our external condition, we rise and fall, our riches 
fail us, our houses crumble, our purple robes fade and 
become tatters, our bodies become diseased, and the 
brow counts the years by its wrinkles ; the face of the 
earth changes, and if the sleepers should rise up from 
the cemeteries, they would not know the places of 
their habitation. These things are temporal, and woe 
to him whose happiness is bound up with them. Eter- 
nal life, beneath the surfaces of time, only changes 
from less to greater; and when these surfaces roll ofP, 
it flowers into a world of its own, — a world where the 
beauty without mirrors the beauty within, and where 
the leaf is ever green, a;nd the bodies we wear are 
ever young, because they are the outgrowths of that 
which cannot die. Hence the special significance of 
the promise, I v/ill raise him up at the last day.'' 
It is by the life received through the Great Mediator, 
and w^hich is independent of all mortal mutations, 
that we attain to this glorious resurrection. 

Death is the negation of life, and eternal death is 
the negation of that spiritual life which comes from 
the soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, — death, 
therefore, deep-seated and beyond the scope of earthly 
change. It is the death and the consequent disorder 
tlmt. abide in the immortal nature, and which are just 
the same though the v/orldly condition and prospects 
be propitious and fair. The shows of time may cover 



124 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



it upj the superincluction of hollow moralities may 
conceal its virulence, but there it is. No medicines 
remove it, no appliances from without can reach it; 
so that w^hen these time surfaces roll oflp from that 
also, its deformity emerges, and it simply finds itself 
in its own place, its own surroundings and home. The 
same word, acdjvtov, eternal, is applied to the punish- 
ment of the bad and the happiness of the good, and 
it refers not at all to duration in months and years. 
It means, rather, those opposite states of mind from 
which the idea of time and all its contingencies has 
been completely eliminated; one lifted up into the 
eternal glories, the other depressed into the shadows 
of the eternal gloom. It is a happiness or a disorder, 
transfused not from this world but from another, and 
which, therefore, survives temporal duration and mor- 
tal dissolution, and exists in sharper contrast than ever 
after the fashions of this world have passed away. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



HOME. 

He A YEN and hell are the opposite conditions of 
humanity. In the former, God is supreme ; in the 
latter, self In this natural sphere they are mingled 
and interfused, and they could not be separated with- 
out destroying the framework of society. This con- 
dition of things must needs be, in a preliminary and 
probationary state, based on external relations and 
material interests and pursuits. We have seen that 
the necessary result of the resurrection will be to 
bring on the crisis, or the judgment-time, and that 
the necessary result of the judgment will be to re- 
solve humanity into its elements, and separate the 
wheat and the tares when the reapers come to the 
harvest. 

But what is heaven, and what is hell ? It is not 
so difficult to. answer these questions, when once pos- 
sessed of the truth that their elements are bound up 
and waiting within us. We shall dwell now, how- 
ever, more exclusively upon the former, because it is 
a more welcome theme, and because if we know what 
heaven is, we shall know also its opposite, without 
attempting to evoke its awful imagery. 

We know of no subject so practical as this. The 
whole business of the present life, with all its disci- 

11 * 125 



126 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



pline of labor, sorrow, and joj, is to prepare and 
ripen us for heaven; and if it shall not do this, life 
will be a miserable failure. But how shall we pre- 
pare for it, unless we know what we are to prepare 
for? How can we travel, unless we know the point 
of the compass toward which we are steering ? 

Let it not be said that we have not data,- and very 
distinct ones, too, from which to reason. If heaven 
and hell are not places to be entered by locomotion, 
but states of being to be evolved out of man, then 
they are already in man, and so our souls are pro- 
phetic, and through them we have an opening into 
the wonders of immortality. You will always find 
that one's notions of heaven correspond to his own 
spiritual state. They are his idea of the supreme 
good. Examine that, and it will show you precisely 
your spiritual position, — just as the traveler knows 
his latitude by looking at the north star and noting 
its distance above the horizon. What would you 
have, if your most ardent desires were gratified, and 
your loftiest ideals were actualized? Suppose you 
stood at the fabled wishing-gate, what is the peti- 
tion you would send up? What are the suspira- 
tions that go up from the profound within you? 
What sort of a world would you make for yourself, 
if you could have everything your own way, and 
embody around you your own best imaginations? 
Answer these questions honestly, and your idea of 
heaven is defined to you, and you will see whether it 
be carnal and selfish, or spiritual and pure. 

Hence it is important that our idea of heaven shall 
correspond to the reality. It is our idea of the 



HOME. 



127 



supremely good and fair, always shedding its lus- 
trous beauty on our toilsome' road, to cheer and glad- 
den us along the climbing way. 

Dismiss from your thought at the beginning the 
idea that all the departed saints are to be gathered 
into one assemblage for unceasing worship, and that 
you are to be merged in that vast multitude. Re- 
member that all the past generations outnumber the 
thousand millions that are now upon the earth. What 
would you be in such a great mob of saints, hoarse 
with hallelujahs ? Descend into your heart, and you 
will find there a deep and unquenchable instinct, — 
one which belongs to the spiritual nature, — which 
death, therefore, cannot quench, but which it rather 
sets free for a more unreserved enjoyment of its 
objects. It is the instinct of home. It is this which 
determines human loves and sympathies around special 
points and centres, and forbids ever the notion of a 
formless multitude. It is this which will determine 
every soul to its special place by quick and unerring 
affinities, just as the matter of the vast and shapeless 
nebulse determined around innumerable points of 
twinkling flame, till the whole became thickly stud- 
ded with stars. 

There is one grand motive, love and obedience to 
the Lord, which rules in all regenerated hearts ; but 
it has a- thousand modes and forms of manifestation, 
according to each one's mental and moral structure, 
special tastes, habitudes, and affections. It is so here ; 
it will be so always. The instinct of home is simply 
the drawing together of souls most alike and congen-- 
erous around their own special centre, tliat there the 



128 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



rulino; love mav have the fallest o-ratincation and 
nourishment, and from that centre radiate in most 
delightful exercise for the good of others. Two or 
more minds toned alike, and acting as one, from a 
common centre and for a common end, make up the 
idea of home. It is so now, it will be so always. 
Let the instinct of home be destroyed, and man would 
be utterly demoralized, or hopelessly insane. His 
life becomes aimless, and he wanders in spiritual vag- 
abondism, he knows not whither or for what. The 
animals have not this instinct, except so far as they 
reflect it from man, and are drawn by him within its 
influence. It is his by eminent endowment and pre- 
rogative. Hence the peculiar and utter loathsome- 
ness of those crimes which are committed against it, — 
which either disturb the unity of home or soil its 
purity; for the lusts that tend to this destroy the 
very image of humanity, and break it in pieces under 
the hoofs of the most swinish pollution. 

Our home is always where our affections are. We 
sigh and wander, we vibrate to and fro, till we rest 
in that special centre where our deepest loves are gar- 
nered up. Then the heart fills and brims over with 
its own happiness, and spreads sweetness and fertility 
all around it. Very often when the eyes are closing 
in death, and this world is shutting off the light from 
the departing soul, the last wish which is made audible 
is "to go home.'^ The words break out sometimes 
throuo:h the cloud of delirium ; but it is the souFs 
deepest and most central want, groping after its object, 
haply soon to find it as the clogs of earth clear away, 
and she sjorings up on the line of swift affection, as 



HOME. 



129 



the bee with unerring precision shoots through the 
dusk of evening^ to her cell. 

How admirable are the arrangements of Providence 
by which he gradually removes the home-centre from 
this world to the other, and so draws our affections 
toward the heavenly abodes ! We start in life an 
unbroken company ; brothers and sisters, friends and 
lovers, neighbors and comrades, are with us ; there is 
circle within circle, and each one of us is at the 
charmed centre where the heart's affections are aglow, 
and whence they radiate outward upon society. Youth 
is exuberant with joy and hope, the earth looks fair, 
for it sparkles with May-dews wet, and no shadow 
hath fallen upon it. We are all here, and we could 
live here for ever. The home-centre is on the hither 
side of the river, and why should we strain our eyes 
to look beyond? But this state of things does not 
continue long. Our circle grows less and less. It is 
broken and broken, and then closed up again ; but 
every break and close makes it narrower and smaller. 
Perhaps before the sun is at his meridian the majority 
are on the other side, the circle there is as large as the 
one here, and we are drawn contrariwise and vibrate 
between the two. A little longer, and w^e have almost 
all crossed over; the balance settles down on the 
s]3iritual side, and the home-centre is removed to the 
upper sphere. At length you see nothing but an aged 
pilgrim standing alone on the river's brink, and look- 
ing earnestly toward the country on the other side. 
In the morning, that large and goodly company re- 
joicing together with music and wine ; in the even- 
ing, dwindled down to that solitary old man, the last 

I 



130 



TFIE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



of his family and the last of his generation^ waiting 
to go home, and filled with pensive memories of the 
Long Ago ! 

A question, which the bereaved heart has sometimes 
revolved painfully, receives now a full and satisfactory 
solution : Shall we know our friends after death V 
How do we know them here ? We know them since 
their peculiar qualities of mind and affection are 
imaged in the features, and expressed and toned in 
the living form, made effusive of the soul within. 
But all this is more completely true of the spiritual 
man, since spiritual body is more quickly and per- 
fectly the exponent of the soul, and the very effigy 
of its affection ; and hence it will result that we shall 
know those we have loved even better than we knew 
them here. For when thouo;ht meets thoug^ht, and 
heart opens to heart, it will be the fond gaze of the 
old, familiar faces ; — faces that have not changed ex- 
cept to be made more familiar, since more than ever 
they are the living transparencies through which we 
look into the well-springs of hearts that have beat in 
unison with our own. The doctrine of friendly recog- 
nition is once formally stated in the New Testament,* 
and always implied. It needed no other statement 
than the doctrine of the resurrection, from which it 
comes as a necessary corollary, while it chimes in with 
the prophetic yearnings of human hearts. The resur- 
rection body is not manufactured and put on after- 
ward, but it is the heart's most cherished love growing 
into its most perfect form and likeness, putting on 
robes bright with the colors of the spirit and wavy 
^- 1 Thessaionians iv. 13, 14. 



HOME. 



131 



with its tremblements, and looking unclouded from 
its own features and aspect. Recognizing our friends ! 
We hardly do as much now; for if we journey too far 
from each other, we find when we meet again that 
time has been so busy with our clay tenement, and 
has so beaten and battered it, that we look long, and 
must trace the old signs and lineaments as Old Mor- 
tality traced the inscriptions on the tombs. Death 
does not obliterate the handwriting, but removes the 
moss and the rubbish that had gathered over it, and 
the resurrection brings it out more boldly than alto- 
reliefs. Death removes the mask of time and age, 
that the undecaying affections may take on the face 
and features that belong to them in the freshness of 
their immortal prime. Yea, further, it results, if we 
choose to follow out the deduction, that we shall not 
only recognize the friends we have seen and loved, 
but friends we never saw before, though they have 
long been near us ; for souls congenerous with each 
other will meet as if they had been kith and kin from 
the beginning, — -just as here there are minds which 
on their first meeting seem each the complement of 
the other, and they will almost have it that they knew 
each other in some pre-existent world. 

Our present topic is exceedingly suggestive on the 
whole subject of the future retribution. The home- 
instinct constitutes the essential law that arranges the 
societies of heaven and hell. It is the " Come, ye 
blessed,^' and Depart, ye cursed,'^ not imposed as an 
arbitrary sentence from without, but executed by sure 
impulsions from within. The soal which is foul, and 
whose life is perverted, is excluded from heaven, 



132 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



because there it would be the most wretched. It has 
no home-centre tliere^ and the clash of life opposed to 
life w^ould be sharp and dreadful. It goes where its 
most cherished and ruling affection shall find its 
sphere and exercise, because there it will suffer the 
least of anywhere in the universe, and there it finds 
all which in the nature of things it can enjoy; though, 
alas ! how baleful is the glow of unclean lusts, and 
how dense the smoke of false illusions that ever rise 
out of them ! The home-instinct is the law that dots 
the circles from highest to lowest, and concentres 
around them all spirits in their class and order ; and 
they shine forth star-like up the terraces of the heav- 
enly mountain, or they gleam out point beyond point 
along the vales of Gehenna, and constitute the down- 
ward range of its lurid fires ! 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE HEAVENLY PEACE. 

The imagination paints the heavenly state as one 
of eternal peace, the sunshine after the storm, the 
haven securely reached after the waves of trouble 
have ceased to roll. But let us be careful not to con- 
found two very different things. Peace is not rest or 
repose. It is the highest and most intense activity, 
but the activity of concording elements. AYhen the 
elements conflict and counter-work each other, they 
produce a state of war ; when they join and act as 
one, the result is the most perfect life and the pro- 
foundest peace. 

1. This present preliminary state is called one of 
warfare ; not primarily because we have to contend 
with evils external to us, but because the elements of 
the warfare are within us. Within is the battle-plain 
between self and God, between the opposing forces of 
heaven and hell. One comes on as the other recedes, 
one towers in its strength as the other becomes weak 
and slinks away. When the selfish nature is entirely 
subdued and expelled, then God becomes all in all, 
inspiring all our affections, tingeing all our fancies, 
swaying all our faculties ; and when this work is com- 
plete, we are lost in God ; and this is heaven. There 

12 133 



134 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



is no more conflict in the soul, for the victory is 
gained. All its powers are in harmony, and all its 
motions are sphere-melodies. Peace is the profound 
hush and tranquillity after all our evil dispositions 
have been expunged, and the activities of our higher 
nature are unimpeded and uncontrolled. Then come 
a new sense of the Divine presence, and clearer per- 
ceptions of the Divine attributes and person, fulfilling 
the promise, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
sliall see God.'' Just in the degree that evil goes out 
of us, God comes within us, and he is the peace 
supreme. We get foregleams of this even now, for 
when sinful passions are hushed or expelled, and 
doubts that went over our sky have cleared off, the 
soul opens inward even up to God, and he floods all 
her faculties with sunshine, — suggesting that noontide 
of the Divine glory when, in the body celestial, with 
the susceptibilities qidckened, and the faculties exalted 
and new-organized, God shall be her sun that never 
sets, and her moon that never wanes. 

" No sun arose, — I saw no moon 

Go paling through the air ; 
God's glorious presence, like a sun, 

Was here, — was everywhere; 
It brooded o'er the flowering plains, 

On all the hills it glowed ; 
If here I looked, or there I looked, 

I saw the face of God." 

If we stop here, and only conceive of heaven as being 
that state where self is extinguished, God is in all 
and all are in him, we have a vivid idea of its un- 
changing blisSj and its golden peace. 



THE HEAVENLY PEACE. 



135 



2. But further than this^ we get a very distinct con- 
ception of the moralities of heaven as an essential 
element in its happiness. Conceive that social state 
which results from the extinction of the selfish loves, 
where the good of all others is the supreme object for 
which every one lives, where there are no by-ends, no 
exclusively private interests to be made paramount, 
but where each lives for all and all for each; conceive 
this, and you get an idea of the moralities of heaven. 
The more of happiness there is for all, the more there 
is of rejoicing for every one, for each lives in all, and 
all in each, and the whole in God. Think of the 
sources of our trouble here. Our pride is mortified, 
our social ambition is frustrated ; somebody is above 
us, and our envy rankles ; somebody is below us, and 
we scorn them ; somebody has wronged us, and we 
brood upon the injury. Or private good, and not 
social, is made sole and paramount, and then we 
clutch for our portion, that we may enjoy it alone, and 
hence lust and avarice with their groveling train. 
But when the grand crisis resolves humanity into its 
elements, these last part off to that scale that slides 
downward toward the abysses, while the others rise 
into the purpling ethers that ever lie on the celestial 
summits as a smile dropped from the face of God. In 
that hallowed air self cannot breathe, and on those 
sky-bathed summits every one lives for every other 
one, and thus the bliss of all is poured in full measure 
into the heart of each, and there is no discording ele- 
ment, but one pulse-beat of everlasting love. 

3. There is another element of the heavenly hap- 



136 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



piness. We do not know each other now. We shall 
know each other then. These fleshly externals do as 
much to conceal us as to reveal us to each other. 
Through these dull instrumentalities we utter our^ 
selves imperfectly, and sometimes we utter what we 
never intended. Even the poet, who becomes golden- 
mouthed, halts and stammers in provincialisms, and 
we wonder what he means. We tune our pipes and 
launch out bravely for the sphere-melodies, but break 
down into tavern-music. Hence the clouds and sepa- 
rations that often come in between hearts that do not 
know each other, and cause the love of many to wax 
cokl. Hence the suspicions and misconstructions that 
infect human intercourse here below. Suppose all 
these to be removed. Suppose these clumsy externals 
that lie upon the spirit, and which she vainly endea- 
vors to struggle through, to have fallen away. Sup- 
pose the outward man so to answer to the inward that 
it mirrors forth as in God's crystals, so that souls 
lie open to each other as the day, and nothing hinders 
the interflashings of the sunshine, and we have sup- 
posed nothing more than our whole doctrine necessi- 
tates and the Scriptures describe. ^' The earnest 
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifesta- 
tion of the sons of God.'' " We see now through a^ 
glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in 
part, but then shall I know even as I am known." 
The imagination can hardly depict too vividly the 
elevation of the social state through the removal of 
earthly clogs and concealments, and the giving the 
sons of God to each other without reserve. 



THE HEAVENLY PEACE. 



137 



4. There is still another element of the heavenly 
happiness. It follows logically from the doctrine of 
the resurrection, that it ^yill introduce us to new facili- 
ties for the acquisition of kno^Yledge and the develop- 
ment of a higher intelligence. ^>Yhat hinders us here ? 
The limitations of the natural body and the grossness 
and clumsiness of its instrumentalities. Our know- 
ledge of things no^Y is for the most part mere surface- 
knowledge. Even matter, that we handle so much, 
we only know by its external properties. But rising 
out of its sphere, and being new organized for higher 
accpiisitions, we shall see things in their internal prin- 
ciples and causes, and not merely in their gross results, 
not "through a glass darkhV^ but "face to face.^' 
Chalmers, Taylor, Dick, and kindred writers, all of 
them swamped in materialism, give us the privilege 
of ranging from planet to planet in the resurrection 
body. They do not seem to consider that much bet- 
ter than these excursions into outer space would be a 
knowledge of the first principles whence all this goodly 
nniverse was evolved ; that to approach undazzled the 
primal essence, whence suns and stars and galaxies 
rolled out like sparkles from an undying flame, is to 
comprehend the universe more perfectly than to roam 
over its surfaces and square miles. To reason from 
spiritual things downward to natural, or from the cen- 
tre to the surface, is to reason surely and rapidly, for 
the eye gathers up the results in groups and classes. 
Knowing things in their principles and causes, we 
shall know the rest without counting up the details. 
AVe could know what matter is better bv discernino; 
its essence than by handling its forms ; we could know 

12 



138 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



what spirit is better by seeing into its life than by 
counting up its actions. And better than telescopes 
and crucibles in understanding the universe would 
be a knowledge of its causes, and a perception of its 
glory and beauty as flashings from the eternal fire. 

5. There is another element still. The love of 
beauty innate in all human hearts is an endowment of 
our immortal being. It is very true that in the child 
and in the merely natural man it only ministers to a 
sensuous gratification, since to them the grand or the 
beautiful in the external world is not the symboliza- 
tion of moral and spiritual qualities. They admire 
it for the form and the coloring, and for nothing more. 
It is far otherwise after the soul has become new-born, 
and is haunted and tormented with ideals of moral 
perfection, and yearns to see a nature that shall copy 
them down upon her tablet, or shade them oflP in her 
innumerous lines of perspective. She longs to see 
her conceptions of what is perfect in grace and gran- 
deur exfigured and taking form, the outward answer- 
ing to the inward, the real to the ideal, as the sky 
down in the still lake answers to the sky above, when 

"Two equal heavens witli rival splendors glow." 

Then it is that this world becomes merely a lan- 
euao^e and a symbol, and the whole beautiful Cosmos 
is loved, not for what it is in itself, but because it 
seems a reflection — though, alas ! how cold and dim ! 
— of something more bright and perfect on the other 
side of Time. Poetry, when doing its highest office, 
is nothing more than an attempt to make the things 



THE HEAVENLY PEACE. 



139 



that are seen the prints of the things invisible. Imagi- 
nation then becomes a prophet by making nature^ 
with all her treasnre-honse of imagery^ the analogue 
of what shall be hereafter ; or, for it comes to the 
same thing, of what is already in the human soul 
waiting for its expression and symbolization. The 
highest work which genius ever does is to humanize 
nature, to take up her forms and images, and set 
them in new array, and show them aglow with hitman 
loves and passions^ like the precious stones on the 
high-priest's breastplate, whose colors changed and 
sparkled to the influx of spiritual fire. 

Still we confess to the inadec[uacy of nature as the 
expression of our loftiest ideals. The plague-spot of 
sin and imperfection is on all things here below. In 
her sublimest moods, in her most charming holiday 
festival, in the utterance of all her choral voices, the 
heart revolves the question, and demands if this be 
all. Has God hung down these pictures from his 
throne as the most perfect imprints of the good and 
the fair, and not rather as dim shadowings of what 
may be, as helps to our faith and stairs to our 
thouo'hts climbing^ toward realms of a more refulg-ent 
summer or a more endiu'ing spring? Is there no 
world where the worm never gnaws at the root of the 
rose, where the yellowness of decay never comes upon 
the woods, or winter never pours over them his deso- 
lating howl? Such is the heart's C[uestion, after a 
nature that is above nature, and art is nothing else 
than that. It attempts to actualize that conception 
by stealing from nature its finest colors and extract- 
ing its purest C|uintessence, and then spreading them 



140 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



out agaioj and exhibiting tliem in new comLiuations 
upon the easel. But the forms of art are all dead, 
and we breathe over them the prayer of Pygmalion 
in vain. Art is the reaching upward after a more 
transcendent beauty, and confessing, after her work is 
done, that she can only give you its corpse without 
the reality. 

It is, therefore, only a fulfillment of the deepest 
prophesyings of renovated souls, — prophesyings which 
the poet and the artist utter in broken speech, when 
the Divine Revealers show us a spiritual world that 
transcends the natural ; not the disembodied entities 
or ghostly abstractions of the metaphysicians, but a 
world of forms and substances so much nearer in de- 
gree to spirit that they pulsate with its life and breathe 
with its fragrancy, and put on robes chromatic with 
all its beauty, and quick with all the rustlings of its 
love; a world of objective scenery, on which ever 
lies the sweet morning light of 'subjective peace; a 
world, therefore, whose leaf can never fade, and 
wdiose flower can never wither, because it wears 
the colorings of souls that are flooded with the life 
everlasting. ^' They shall hunger no more, neither 
thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on 
them, nor any heat; for the Lamb which is in the 
midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead 
them" unto living fountains of waters.'^ ^^As the 
appearance of the bow in the cloud in the day of 
rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round 
about.''* 

* Kev. vii. 17 ; Ezekiel i. 28. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



agree:\jexts axd differences. 

Ix the preceding chapters we have -spoken freely 
of the tendencies of religious naturalism, and we have 
dwelt upon the absurdities of the old and commonly 
received doctrine of the resurrection. We hasten to say. 
that the doctrine as thus exhibited is not given as the 
special badge of any one of the Christian denomina- 
tions. Among those reputed the most sound in re- 
ligious belief there is considerable range of opinion 
on this subject, and the best minds of all sects pass 
out of dark and gross literalism toward the mount 
where the letter is transfigured by the truth within 
it. It would not be candid if w^e did not also exhibit 
the highest and best aspect which the doctrine of a 
material resurrection has assumed ; and for this we 
pause a moment in our inquiries. We find an article 
on the Resurrection in the Biblical Repository of No- 
vember, 1845, and we have before us two works by 
Dr. Hitchcock in which he handles this topic, in one 
of them with considerable fullness and care. It is 
delightful to follow Dr. Hitchcock in whatever he 
writes, even when we cannot agree with him, on ac- 
count of the spirit of piety and charity with which 
every page is fragrant. His teachings may be summed 
up as follows. 

141 



142 



THE IMMOP.TAL LIFE. 



1. He fully admits the difficulties and absurdities 
^vliicli tlie old doctrine involves^ — that of a resurrec- 
tion of the same bodies that die. " The chemist 
knows full well that they suffer entire decomposition, 
and that the ultimate elements are scattered by the 
winds and waves, and are taken up by other bodies, 
it may be by those of other men ; so that the same 
particles may enter into the composition of a multitude 
of human beings. How, then, can the body which is 
laid in the grave be raised ; since not even Omnipo- 
tence can make the same particles a part of two or 
more bodies at the same time.'^ 

2. Alive to the force of this objection, he argues 
that identity between the ante-resurrection and post- 
resurrection body is not an identity of particles. AVe 
do not even now wear the same bodies from year to 
year. 'Not an atom that composes our physical 
structure at this moment will remain in it twenty 
years hence. " Compare a forest-tree weighing many 
tons with the seed weighing a few grains, from which 
it sprang, and then recollect, also, that only a small 
part of the seed finds its way into the future plant, 
and we may safely say that the proportion between 
the particles derived from the seed and from other 
sources is as one to a million.'' So of our present 
and our resurrection bodies. " It is not necessary to 
suppose that more than a millionth part of a ten- 
thousand-millionth part'' is common to them both, 
but this atom, however minute, serves as an " infinites- 
imal germ" for the future bocly.f 

3. He believes that the resurrection body will differ 
^ Lectures on tlie Four Seasons, p. 10. f Lectures, p. 17. 



AGEEEMEJsTS AND DIFFERENCES. 



143 



vastly from our present bodies. The organization Ave 
now have will not enter into it at all. The infinites- 
imal germ^^ will be a nucleus around w^hich the 
future body will be formed ; but the future body will 
not be flesh and blood, will not be subject to decay, 
but immortal, and Avill be powerful and glorious 
beyond anything we now conceive of. 

The reader will perceive that the doctrine, as here 
modified by Dr. Hitchcock, differs essentially from 
the old traditional one, and that he comes within an 
^^infinitesimal" particle of clearing himself from the 
church-yards altogether. But for this " millionth 
part of a ten-thousand-millionth part,'^ his theory, 
and what we have unfolded as the Bible theory, might 
easily be made to blend together. But naturalism in 
theology, though infused homoeopathically, gives its 
cast to the whole, and colors the entire conception of 
the future life. When this excellent writer comes to 
the construction of his theory, the "infinitesimal 
germ," rescued from the sepulchres, plays a most 
important part, and organizes everything in conformity 
Avith itself Thus : — 

1. He thinks the Scriptures aver, in terms not to 
be explained away, that at the resurrection something 
will be actually "raised out of the grave." The 
Bible, he says, "constantly" speaks in this manner, 
and to save the veracity of the text, he holds to the 
" infinitesimal germ," which, at the second coming, 
Avill rise again. Omniscience has watched over it for 
this specific purpose, and Omnipotence will bring it 
forth, and organize the new body around it."^ 
^ Lectures, p. 17. 



144 



THE IMMOETAL LIFE. 



2. Of course, then, the resurrection body will be 
composed of matter ; the best to be found, but matter 
still. Though a better and more glorious body than 
the one we have now, it will be made of material 
particles, and therefore it must exist in space and 
time, and under natural law. The germ, though ever 
so small, holds us to the natural plane of existence. 

The Apostle certainly means that the spiritual body 
is composed of matter, unless, indeed, there be in the 
universe a third substance distinct from matter and 
spirit''; and of this, he says, ^^we have no positive 
evidence." * 

3. The writer throws out a conjecture as to what 
this matter may be, w^hich shall compose bodies so 
much more glorious than those we wear now. Phil- 
osophy furnishes an example of such matter. The 
phenomena of light, heat, and electricity, as well as 
the history of several comets, make it almost certain 
that there exists, diffused through every part of the 
material universe, an exceedingly subtile and active 
fluid, sometimes called the luminiferous ether. It 
seems to be the agent by which light, heat, and elec- 
tricity are transmitted by undulations in every direc- 
tion with inconceivable velocity, not less than 200,000 
miles per second. It exists wherever light, heat, and 
electricity penetrate, and therefore it is found not only 
in wdiat we call empty space, but in the most solid 
bodies, since they are more or less permeated by these 
agents. There is no evidence that this ether possesses 
weight, though it has the power of resistance, since it 
obstructs the movements of several comets. No force 

* Eeligion and Geology, p. 398. 



AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES. 



145 



which the mechanism of the cliemist can exert has 
the least effect upon it. Nor is it cognizable by any 
of the senses ; and yet certain phenomena indicate its 
existence and prodigious activity. 

"^ow, without asserting that the spiritual body is 
made up of the luminiferous ether, or of a substance 
analogous to it, it is interesting that we have evidence 
of the existence of such a substance in nature, and 
great reason to believe it to be attenuated matter. 
Reasoning on the subject, we should presume that 
the future body would be of such a nature as to be 
unaffected by mechanical and chemical action, and 
which might exist with equal freedom and without 
change in the midst of the sun, or the volcano, or in 
the polar ice ; and yet that it would possess great ac- 
tivity and energy ; and such a substance we have be- 
fore us in the universal ether. Of such a substance 
the spiritual body may be composed, or of something 
analogous to it.'' 

It is a portion of this luminiferous ether " which 
Dr. Hitchcock supposes may rise out of the graves at 
the last day. This may be the " infinitesimal germ." 
" Who knows but a portion of this wonderful form 
of matter, connected with the body in this world, 
may remain isolated till the resurrection morning, 
and await the Divine summons to be reunited with 
the immortal spirit?"* 

4. The luminiferous ether enters still further into 
tlie theory of this learned writer on the subject of 
Eschatology, or tlie Last Things. The saints hav- 
ing been indued with these wonderful bodies at the 
" Lectures, pp. 27-29. 
13 K 



146 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



resurrection mornings tlie earth will then be " burned 
up/' and prepared anew for tlieir final abode. But 
the burning up will not be by a sudden miracle. It 
will constitute a geological epoch, and it will be thou- 
sands of years before the earth emerges out of destruc- 
tion, and becomes green and peaceful again, so as to 
be the scene of the Millennial Eden. But, mean- 
while, the risen saints are safe in their bodies of lu- 
miniferous ether. They can live in fire without being 
injured, and therefore may exist on the earth through 
the conflagrations and commotions of the transition 
period."^ 

The resurrection of material bodies, w^ith its con- 
genial doctrines, is here stated probably in a form as 
free from difficulties and objections as it can be in the 
'nature of the case. Our object is not controversy, 
but fair representation. The truth, brought out in 
its own divine features, commends itself, and no one 
who once has a clear and affectionate grasp on the 
true Bible doctrine upon this subject will ever lose it. 
"We throw in, however, a few comments by the way. 

1. The venerable writer, whose views we have just 
given, will find, we think, if he gives his attention 
specially to the point, that the Scriptures do not con- 
stantly '' speak of a resurrection of something ^' out 
of the grave.'^ Tie will find, we are confident, that 
they never use that or any equivalent expression, if 
we except the passage in John v. 28, already ex- 
pounded. They speak of the resurrection of the 
dead, never of dead bodies, or bodies of any de- 
scription raised out of the graves. 

E.-;ligion and Geology, p. 398. 



AGREEMENTS AXD DIFFERENCES. 



147 



2. The reader will at once observe, that, in the 
theory just described, Paul's beautiful analogy fails, 
and becomes completely nugatory. The infinites- 
imal germ does not fulfill the conditions of his state- 
ment. The spiritual body, in Paul's description, 
rises, not out of the grave, but out of the natural 
body, as the blade out of the riven and decaying 
capsula. One unfolds continuously from the other, 
and that not arbitrarily, but under the operation of a 
most admirable law. But what have we here ? The 
whole seed decays, germ and all ; its particles are 
scattered to the four winds, and ages afterward some 
one of its infinitesimal atoms is taken, and by arbi- 
trary appointment and miracle made the nucleus of 
another body. The analogy is destroyed. 

3. The distinction which Paul makes between the 
natural and spiritual body is not preserved. Make 
matter as rarefied as Ave may, it is natural body still, 
and though made of lumiuiferous ether, it locks us 
within the conditions of space and time, though haply 
we may endure the polar ice or the volcanic fires. 
Here we are again, stuck fast in naturalism, and on 
the dead flats of matter, and all we have gained is the 
liberty of moving with swifter locomotives. By the 
luminiferous ether we dispense with the railroads and 
the telegraphic wires, but none of the ethers or agen- 
cies of planetary space, nor all of them combined, 
shall conduct us upward, through the degrees of 
LIFE, out of natural space into the eternal world, and 
among "celestial bodies," — among the immortals that 
gather nearer and gaze on the sun-robes of the 
Highest. 



148 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



4. The old doctrine of a disembodied state returns 
upon us. We do not get even our portion of the lu- 
miniferous ether till the end of time. The seed-spark 
of our resurrection-body will not appear till Gabriel 
blows after it with his trumpet and kindles it up 
somewhere. During the thousands of years that 
must first roll away, we are nobody and nowhere. 
We cannot lie down to the last agony and see the 
shores of immortality in all their bloom and fragrancy 
come down and touch our very feet. They recede 
away, away, like one in anger drawing back her 
skirts,^' and the long, formless void sweeps between, 
into which we must be crowded olf, and there we 
must remain till the end of the world. 

This is not the immortality of the Bible. There, 
its substantial shores are in sight and in hearing, and 
the chimes of its belfries are wafted to the ear of the 
dying believer. " The welcome will sound in the 
heavenly world ere the farewell is hushed in this." 
We have not a doubt that the venerated divine whose 
words we have quoted so conceives in his inmost 
thought, when that heaven, now so near to him, and 
whose mellowing light lies already on his spirit, rises 
on the eye of his faith ; and that he knows, by intui- 
tions which are more unerring than his theorizings, 
that he shall meet the sainted dead from whom he has 
been separated, as soon as death has lifted the veil, — 
meet them, not " disembodied,'^ and waiting for the 
luminiferous ether, but with warm graspings, and 
"clothed upon" with celestial bodies, and amid the 
resurrection glories. 

5. Let us look one moment at the scientific basis 



AGREEilEXTS AND DIPFEREXCES. 



149 



of this liiminiferous theory. Our common atmo.-phere 
is composed of three principal gases^ mingled in uu- 
ec[ual proportions^ oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid 
gas. These, with a fourth called hydrogen, which in 
volume forms the chief ingredient in water, are the 
basis of material bodies. Oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, 
and carbonic acid gas, with some other subordinate 
gases, make up all natural substances, from the most 
subtle to the most solid. The chemist knows very 
well that the hardest rocks, as well as lic|uids, vegeta- 
bles, fruits, and flowers, the human frame with its 
nerves and muscles, are nothing more than the con- 
solidation of these gases in their endless combinations. 
All bodies first existed in the form of atmospheres or 
ethers, and they may be resolved back into them again. 

These four gases, however, are not simple and nn- 
compounded. There are others still more subtle, 
called '^imponderable," which enter into their com- 
position, and through them, therefore, constitute essen- 
tial elements of all material substances."^ These lat- 
ter, the imponderable, are known as heat and elec- 
tricity, and they are latent, one or both, in all bodies, 
and sometiraes may be evolved with prodigious force. 
If water be united to sulphuric acid, the fluid very 
soon becomes boiling hot, solely by the evolution of 
latent caloric; and it is said that Professor Faraday 
considers it an ascertained fact, that there is enough 
electricity for the destruction of human life in a sin- 
* The reader will bear in mind that this treatise "was written 
before scientists had demonstrated that light, heat, and electricity 
are. not material substances, but modes of aciivity. Their dis- 
coveries, however, do not affect the argument except to give it 
new point and application. 
13 * 



150 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



gle drop of vrater. The luminiferous ether is still 
more subtle, and eludes the aDalysis of the chemist; 
but, like the others, it performs its use in the grand 
economy, and there seems little reason to doubt that 
it forms one of the essential elements of matter. 

Dr. Hitchcock, then, is not only reasonable in sup- 
posing that it is connected with" our present bodies ; 
he would be pretty safe in supposing that it formed a 
constituent part of every particle of every corpse that 
is laid in the grave. 

But observe, again, that all atmospheres and ethers, 
from their very nature and intrinsic quality, are 
inorganic substances, and physical life is a divinely 
appointed means whereby to change their form and 
convert them into solid organisms, that they may 
serve us wdiile in this world for our instrumentalities. 
Ethers and atmospheres are essentially elastic and 
expansive, and they lie about us furnishing the prime 
material out of which bodies and organizations are to 
be made. In every heaving of our lungs, we turn 
them into blood on their way to form a still more 
solid basis ; and every tree spreads out its leaves that 
flatter in the air, the lungs through wdiich it sucks 
in the gas wdiicli it needs, to turn into carbon or 
w^oody fibre. The worlds that roll through space 
are nothing but condensed ethers, and the exquisite 
organizations that cover their surfaces are the living 
processes for condensing them still in endless propor- 
tions and variations, so as to run through all the 
forms, of grace and all the tints of beauty. But that 
atmospheres as such can be organized bodies, is utterly 
inconceivable, and looks very much like an anomaly 



AGEEEMEXTS AND DIFFERENCES. 



151 



and a solecism. To chan2:e an oro;anism back into 
its gases, is simply to destroy it. Omnipotence must 
here be called in again, not only to work a miracle, 
but an incongruity, unless we suppose the laws and 
Cjualities of matter are to be changed altogether ; and 
that is supposing matter will cease to be matter and 
become the tertium quid of whose existence the Doc- 
tor says there is no evidence. If, therefore, the spirit 
is to come back to the sepulchres, why should it come 
seeking its luminiferous ether, rather than its elec- 
tricity, its caloric, or its oxygen? and even if it should 
find some particle held in special reserve down in the 
bottom of the grave where Omniscience has kept watch 
over it, what can be done with it till it has been 
changed from an ether to a solid, and is made the 
nucleus, not of a collection of gases, but an organ- 
ism? And then will it be comfortable to live with 
it in the transition fires ? 

AYe cannot possibly receive the theory of Dr. 
Hitchcock, but our respect and gratitude toward him 
shall not be diminished on that account, for his dis- 
tinct and candid acknowledgment of the falsity of 
the old doctrine, and his attempt to supply a better 
one ; and if he fails of what we consider the true 
theory, it is because no human ingenuity can build a 
system of pneumatology out of naturalism, that shall 
not tumble to pieces by its own specific gravity. 

6. Truth always presents us with an organic whole, 
whose relations of part to part are not forced and fac- 
titious. A system with seams and gaps at which 
Omnipotence must constantly be called in to work 
miracles, in order to keep the whole from going to 



152 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



pieces, wears the signet of human error and con- 
trivance. The reader will judge wdiether the system 
just described has any such organic proportions ; 
whether it is put together mechanically, like mason- 
work, or whether it unfolds to him part from part, 
like a flower or a palm tree. If a spiritual body is 
desirable at all, why are the saints kept waiting for it 
in limbo ? And what conceivable purpose is answered 
by having the infinitesimal germ the same that w^as 
buried in the graves? Omniscience must specially 
discriminate and keep watch over it through the cen- 
turies, and then Omnipotence must make that and 
none other the commencing particle of a new body, 
which must be built up by special miracle for the 
spirit ah extra, and not be a growth from it ah intra. 
And yet, confessedly, it is not necessary that a single 
atom of our present earthly bodies should enter into 
the future spiritual ones, in order to preserve our per- 
sonal or corporeal identity.* Does all this work in 
the potter's fields, then, look like the. Divine opera- 
tions, or like human system-building? Is it likely 
to take place under that law of continuous and orderly 
progression by which humanity j)uts forth its power, 
from lower to higher, from animal existence to spirit- 
ual, — first, that which is natural, afterward that 
v>diich is spiritual;'' — by which individual man, with- 
out any breaks or cataclysms in his being, unfolds his 

Dr. Hitchcock says, that, for the preservation of our personal 
corporeal identity, is not necessary that the resurrection body 
should contain a single -particle of the body laid in the graved (Lec- 
tures, p. 26.) The Italics are his own. He holds on to the in- 
finitesimal germ, not for philosophical reasons, but because he 
thinks the letter of Scripture requires it. 



AGREEMEXTS AND DIFFEREXCES. 153 



faculties from external to internal^ leaf above leaf, 
till the flower that was inmost opens up and wafts its 
perfume toward the sun, — from the babe all sense 
that creeps on the lap of earth, to the being all seraph 
that basks in the open splendors of the living God? 



CHAPTEE XIX. 



AGKEEMEXTS. 

It very often occurs tliat disagreements in doctrine 
are kept up from want of a proper nomenclature, and 
because the same words convey different ideas to dif- 
ferent minds. AYe have suspected, while writing the 
last chapter, that this might be true of the subject in 
hand, and that differences of opinion might sometimes 
be more apparent than real, and the agreements more 
real than apparent. The terms matter,^' and ^' ma- 
terial body,'^ in distinction from spiritual body, are 
not always used with precision ; and we will now 
proceed to state more distinctly our conception of 
what matter is, and wherein the distinction lies. 

What, then, do v\'e mean by "matter,'^ and what 
and how much do we affirm by the words " material 
body"? AYe affirm nothing in regard to its inner 
essence, for we know nothing about it. Its sub- 
stratum eludes our analysis; its external properties 
and laws are all that come under our definition, and 
all that can in the nature of the case. AYhen I use 
the Avord matter'^ or ^'natural body,^' I mean two 
things, viz. : — 

First, I mean certain properties exhibited to my 
perceptions, — extension, form, hardness or resistance, 
attraction, and, under cer.'ain conditions, color and 



AGREEMENTS. 



155 



elasticity. These are essential to my idea of matter. 
But these are not all. I may have a perception of all 
these, and yet the idea be incomplete. I may shut 
my eyes and dream, all my natural senses being 
locked close, and still have vivid perceptions of ex- 
tension, form, hardness, attraction, color, and elas- 
ticity. I may even have them more vividly than 
when my eyes were open. But no one will say that 
in this latter case I have had a perception of natural 
body. But in what does the difference lie ? Perhaps 
you will say, in the fact that in the one case my per- 
ceptions were real, and in the other, not; in other 
phrase, that in one case the object perceived existed 
solely in my own mind, or, as the philosophers say, 
was purely subjective; whereas in the other case it 
existed both in the mind and out of it, or was both 
subjective and objective at the same time. But there 
I remind you that you are beyond your depth. You 
are there assuming to know something of the sub- 
stratum or essence that lies behind the exhibition of 
these properties, of Avhich thing we agreed at the be- 
ginning you and I are both profoundly ignorant. 
Were the things of Jacob's dream purely subjective? 
of Isaiah's vision in the temple ? of Zachariah's ? 
You do not know it. And how do you know, in any 
two given cases where these properties are exhibited, 
that they have a substratum in one, but not in the 
other? You do not know it, and you had better say 
so ; for this is not where the distinction lies between 
what is matter and what is not. 

But we come to a second condition of the idea of 
matter, and it is clearly this. There must not only be 



156 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



the exhibition of extension, form, hardness, attraction, 
and so forth, but they must be exhibited accobd- 

ING TO THAT OEDER OF SEQUENCE AND COMBLEn ATION 

WHICH WE CALL NATURAL LAW. Then jour idea 
of matter is complete. We must have not only these 
properties, but we must have them under the laws of 
nature, or in what we call the natm^al world. 

Suppose body to exist, either with other properties, 
or with these same properties, but produced and 
exhibited under a totally different law. We have 
body still, it may be more substantial and real than 
ever ; but it is not material body, and it is a misnomer 
to call it so. Suppose, for instance, the natural law 
of attraction, according to the squares of the dis- 
tances, to be abolished, and another law of affinity 
substituted in its place ; suppose body to become visi- 
ble or invisible, not according to the angle of the 
sun's rays falling upon it, but according to a certain 
state of the will ; or suppose it to exhibit the seven 
colors and their shadings, not according to its capacity 
for rqflecting natural light, but on some other condi- 
tion; or suppose the phenomena of proximity and 
distance between two bodies to be conditioned, not on 
the fact that they shall travel through so many feet 
of planetary space, but on the fact that the moral 
state of the souls that occupy them shall be like or 
unlike ; and so on. Who does not see, that, when we 
take this aggregate of properties out from under 
natural law, and give them an altogether new law of 
sequence and combination, they cease to make up 
what we call matter or material body, and become 
something else ; and who then cannot apprehend the 



AGEEEMEXTS. 



157 



stress of Paul's language, when lie says, There are 
celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial ; but the glory 
of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial 
is another " ? 

In the Bibliotheca Sacra for November, 1845, there 
is an article on the Eesurrection. Our readers are 
probably aware that this periodical is the organ of the 
prevailing orthodox thought in Massachusetts. The 
writer maintains the position, that neither Scripture 
nor common sense requires us to believe that a single 
particle of our present bodies is to enter into our 
resurrection bodies. His language is very explicit. 
He says : The particles of a man\s body change once 
in seven years; and yet, according to the idea of 
bodily identity as it exists in all sane minds, the man 
has all the time the same body.^^ '^In perfect accord- 
ance with the same idea, all the particles may be 
changed again during the process of death and resur- 
rection, and the body yet retain its identity.'^ If it 
be granted that the identity remains as entire from 
the age of seventy^ to the resurrection inclusive, as it 
did from birth to the age of seventy, all is granted 
which the obvious sense of Scripture or the common 
belief of Christians requires.'^ " There must be a 
uniting power combining the several parts into a 
unity .'^ The identity of body, according to the 
common sense of mankind, and according to the 
deepest and most exact philosophy, is found in the 
identity of the uniting power, and not in the con- 
tinuous presence of the same particles." 

AVe are out of the grave-yards at last, then ! 
^ EeY. Joseph Tracy. 

14 



158 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



Theology is free from the charnel-houses^ and can 
escape the smell of corpses, orthodoxy itself being 
judge. The umbilical chord that held her to corrup- 
tion and the clay-pits has become not only infinites- 
imal/' but is completely sundered. Thank God for 
that ! Now she can fly or she can run. If we carry 
along with us the uniting power/' retaining that 
after death, we can draw up by it the elements of our 
new body wdierever we please, — from the air, from 
the sun, from Sirius, or from some paradise unknown. 
Not even the smallest germ need come out of the 
grave, and so farewell to its contents for ever. 

Still the writer argues that the spiritual or resur- 
rection body will be material. He does this, however, 
on the assumption that nothing else than matter can 
be body, and that, if it is not matter, it is only a 
phantom. But when he gives his conceptions of the 
spiritual body, he assigns to it new laws and proper- 
ties, and says "it will be far superior to anything 
which we are now able to imagine,'' thus taking it 
expressly out of the category of natural body, making 
it a third substance, or something else than matter as 
w^e know it. So at least it seems to us, and he leaves 
the way open for a full agreement between his doc- 
trine and ours on this particular point, though under 
a difference of phraseology. Both his thought and^ 
his language, however, seem to us here to lack con- 
sistency and clearness. 

What difference remains? None, except in the 
mere point of time when we are to be indued with 
immortal bodies. His philosophy would admit of the 
resurrection of every man at death, and render the 



AGREEME^'TS. 



159 



dreary ^^intermediate state" unnecessary. We die, 
but we retain the uniting power" that shall form a 
new body ; and not only might it be formed immedi- 
ately and continuously, so as to leave no breaks and 
chasms in our history, but the philosophy would seem 
to fit in most harmoniously with that conception. But 
the writer thinks that the most obvious sense of 
Scripture requires a belief in a future simultaneous 
resurrection at the end of the world, and not till then 
Avill the "uniting power" take up and organize the 
new body. So, therefore, we must go into limbo, 
among the " simplicities," " monads," and mathe- 
matical points," and wait there. Here, then, on a 
mere imndum temporis, we part with much regret 
from this sensible writer, though grateful for this 
better aspect which orthodoxy presents to us in him. 
For the full fruition of immortality he looks down 
the centuries, and across an unknown gulf : we expect 
it at death, and see the eternal shores come d.o\\i\ to 
meet us, yea, firm already beneath our feet. 



CHAPTEE XX. 



SUMMAPtY. 

Our course of argument lias led us through sub- 
jects of inexliaustible interest^ and we hope we have 
carried the convictions of our readers along with us. 
Some of them^ holding the traditional interpretations 
respecting the resurrection of Christ and of the phil- 
osophy contained in St. Paul's Epistles^ may think 
that the letter of Scripture is against us. We promise 
to show, if they will leave their traditions a moment, 
tliat the letter is for us when it speaks for itself, and 
that too with a peculiar majesty of utterance. Some- 
thing remains to be said, therefore, in expositions 
confirmatory of the reasonings which we have pre- 
sented. But before we go on, we will review our 
steps and gather up the conclusions in which we now 
rest. 

1. When we attempt to think clearly and ration- 
ally respecting the future life, we must choose between 
three hypotheses. We stand in a trilemma, and we 
must adopt one of three sets of conclusions, and ex- 
clude and reject the other two. We may join the 
meta23h3^sicians, when we shall have the privilege of 
talking wisely and meaning nothing ; of remaining 
in ignorance, showing off a quasi knowledge; of 
leaving the fools agape after us as if we were phil- 

]60 



SUMMARY. 



161 



osopliers, and coucGaling the fact that we are more 
fools ourselves. Or^ secondly, we may join the ma- 
terialists and keep on the level of naturalism, in which 
case we cling to the corpses, and reiterate, These shall 
live again ! Between death and the resurrection is a 
region of dusk, filled with disembodied entities ; but 
after long centuries the trumpet blows, the church- 
yards yield up their mould from which frames of men 
are built, the disembodied entities or '^monads" come 
back into them, and become real men and women once 
more, prepared to enter on their final heaven or hell. 
Each of these is a locale somewhere in space, to be 
reached by locomotives of some kind. Or, thirdly, 
leaving the flats of naturalism, and getting above its 
clay-pits, you ascend into the region of what we call 
the Bible Pneumatology, viz : — 

2. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection and 
the spiritual Avorld. There are celestial bodies and 
bodies terrestrial ; the glory of the celestial is one 
thing, that of the terrestrial quite another thing. 
They differ generically, not in fineness of texture; 
and so neither is perceived by the senses of the other. 
The natural body is not the man, nor any essential 
part of him. The spirit itself is an immortal organ- 
ism, folded in by its clay coverings in order, for pro- 
bationary purposes, to hold connection a w^hile with 
material things. It is the most real part of man, 
since nearer in degree and kindred to the eternal re- 
alities. The resurrection is the emergence of the im- 
mortal being in a spiritual body out of material con- 
ditions, when first it has open relations with a spirit- 
ual world, and is set face to face with spiritual things. 
14^ L 



162 



TffE liMirOHTAL Lll^E. 



3. But to every seed his own body.'' The spir- 
itual body is not manufactured, but created, — created 
froDi within, — and comes out of the natural body as 
the rose out of the bursting calyx, and therefore fra- 
grant with all the moral qualities of the spirit, the 
form and figure of its very life. Hence the resur- 
rection is the disclosure of man, the resolving of hu- 
manity, lost or redeemed, into the demon or the an- 
gel ; and there is nothing covered that shall not be 
revealed, or hid that shall not be known. 

4. Hence the great assize and the judgment-day. 
The life of life comes forth into the noon of truth, 
and all merely external and arbitrary connections are 
abolished; and society forms anew according to the 
affinities of the inmost nature. Truth and falsehood, 
good and evil, are repellent, and they rise or fall and 
gather each to its place of central rest. Hence the 
cleavings that cannot err which take place at the 
grand and solemn crisis. 

5. Yet not by way of revenge, but that each may 
seek the home centre, and find there all which in the 
nature of things he may enjoy. We gravitate to- 
ward the spot where our affections cling, till we find 
it; and thence we reach out again to do the work 
wdiich we love. Hence the homes that rise up through 
all the zones that belt the heavenly hills, each a cen- 
tre of radiances whose circlets throb outward over 
all. 

6. Hence again the spiritual world is neither the 
limbo of the metaphysicians, nor some place which 
the materialists peer after among the stellar spaces. 
It is out of natural space and above it, and has its 



SUMMARY. 



163 



own spaces; it is not a sublimation of the material 
worldj but higher in the order of existence; it is 
nearer in degree to the creative mind, therefore a 
more substantial world than this. It differs from 
this, not because it is without substance, form, ex- 
tension, distances, but because these exist, not under 
natural law, but under spiritual, and are therefore 
redolent with all the moral perfections and excellences 
of spirit itself, and open quite a new page of the 
everlasting beauty and glory. Hence the elements 
of the heavenly happiness when the soul is new or- 
ganized for its work, knows God by nearer and more 
open communion, is brought into the clear exercise 
of its central love and of the perfect moralities, and 
sees its highest imaginings of the good and the fair 
always passing over into their most beautiful reali- 
zations. 

"We are on themes where the heart as well as the 
intellect must lend us its aid, and make the chain 
of logic warm, and not brittle with frost. The 
Church creeds will not avail us much, and if any 
one scruples at breaking away from their letter, let 
him remember that the Church has gone down so 
deep in naturalism as not only to " splash the altars 
with mud,'^ but the windows too, whence the light 
has small chance of getting through. The scholiasts 
will not avail us much ; they are in the clay-beds 
themselves, and they plaster the text with clay till 
that which shone with the light of the empyrean is 
dingy and emits no more white sparkles as you touch 
it. But we will take the word without the clay- 



164 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



plasters, happily if, sitting before it bowed in prayer 
and with a high purpose, the truth may break out of 
the letter, the Son of Man out of the clouds of 
heaven already purpling before the presence of his 
coming. 



CHAx-TEK XXI. 



COisCLUSION. 

As oar theme lias led us oii^ I have not thought it 
worth while to interrupt the course of it by appeals 
to the reader. They come of themselves sometimes 
with a power that presses upon us with a weight too 
painful. We have trembled in contemplating the 
capabilities of human nature^ and the consequences 
that hang on our power of moral choosing. Heaven 
and hell are within us in their first principles^ and held 
in waiting. The Christ who came, and who comes 
yet, lies on our souls as the shining and perfect law, 
and claims us as his own. If we yield and become 
his, keeping nothing back, but giving up all our fac- 
ulties as pliant beneath his hand, we receive him as a 
new creative power; he shapes our affections, and 
thence our whole outward nature, even to the spirit- 
ual body, in which we rise out of earthly conditions 
to breathe in immortal air. If we reject and deny, 
the same law still lies upon us, a sword that gleams 
sharp and dreadful, and shows the awful antagonism 
between us and the Divine justice. We grow into 
the image of hell, and the antagonism widens and 
deepens ; we rise in the spiritual body, that unveils 
our corrupt life and gives it form, and shows the 
antagonism to be eternal ; and the Christ that should 

165 



166 



TPIE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



have saved us judges and dooms us at the last day. 
And so heaven, that rises through the endless ranks, 
or, hell, that yawns through the endless deeps, is 
humanity led forth and dramatized; and our choice 
of the Christ or our rejection of him is the point 
whence the drama unfolds, — upward among the sera- 
phim or downward among the lost. It is a humanity 
regenerated, transfigured, and lifted up, and clothed 
upon from within by God's righteousness ; or it is a 
humanity inverted, and tending away from God, and 
shaped by its own deforming lusts and passions. 
Theological substitutes and fictions may divert our 
attention from this, and lead us to depend on some- 
thing else than personal character, personal holiness, 
and personal righteousness. Woe to him w^ho puts 
his trust in the substitutes ! And happy he who lis- 
tens to the Christ wdio went away that he might come 
near to us and call ! Behold, I stand at the door 
and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the 
door, I will come in and sup with him, and he shall 
sup with me." 



PART II. 



THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



"Does it follow, that by this term (resurrection) they mean to 
imply nothing more than the naked fact of his rising froni the 
tomb? Or do they also mean to include the glorious concomi- 
tants and consequences of that great fact, his accession into heaven, 
and his exaltation to the right hand of God, thus to be 'Head 
over all things in the Church ' ? The latter I must believe to be 
the case in most instances, if not all." — Pbof. Eobixsox. 
368 



CHAPTER I. 



IXTEODUCTOEY. 

The resurrection of Christ, or Lis ascent oat of 
the natural degree of life into the heavenly, is uni- 
formly appealed to in the Xew Testament as the spe- 
cial evidence on which Christianity reposes. For 
many reasons, it is of the first importance. As the 
exemplar of man's entrance upon the immortal life, 
it flings back a flood of light upon the whole subject 
which we now have under investigation. It sheds 
light, too, collaterally upon other topics. It is the 
central fact of the Gospel history, yea, of all human 
history ; and, clearly apprehended, it shapes our en- 
tire conception of the Divine plan, and shows where 
lies the peculiar stress of Christianity as a system of 
doctrines revealed for the salvation of the race. 

In the pages that here follow, we propose to our- 
selves as unobstructed and intimate a view of the 
great event as the case admits. AYe will comprehend 
in it the whole doctrine in its various relations, but 
we shall have special reference to that aspect which 
it presents as illustrating man's resurrection and im- 
mortality. First, ATC Avill apprehend the simple fact 
as the narratives present it to us, and from the fact 
we will ascend to a view of its mighty significance. 

15 169 



CHAPTER II. 



THE GREAT MORNING. 

Our Lord's resurrection is related by the four 
Evangelists, each in a manner somewhat variant from 
the otherSj because each selects the facts according to 
his own special purpose. But put them all together, 
and we have an unbroken series, and a consistent and 
perfect Avhole. Let the reader follow the events in 
their lucid order, and he will have the entire scene 
before him. 

The Saviour expired about three o'clock on Friday 
afternoon. With the cry, ^''It is finished!" his head 
dropped, and the form that walked through Palestine, 
radiant with majesty, hangs a corpse upon the tree. 
The darkness had continued for three hours, — not 
total darkness, but a lurid gloom paled on the faces 
of men, as if the sun also hung as a corpse in the sky. 
At three o'clock there was an earthquake ; not the 
violent shock which that word often implies, for the' 
walls of Jerusalem were not thrown down ; "but the 
earth had tremors and shiverings as if nature also 
were expiring. These bad passed away before night- 
fall, and the terror which had possessed men's minds 
had perhaps passed away too. The next day Avas the 
paschal Sabbath, and according to Jewish notions it 
170 



THE GREAT MOENIXG. 



171 



would be profaned by the spectacle of a dead body ; 
therefore the corpse must be buried on Friday even- 
ing. The soldiers are preparing to do just what in 
ordinary cases was always done with the bodies of 
malefactors^ — heap them together in a pit dug for the 
purpose, perhaps with scoffs and execrations. Imagine 
what this would be to the sensibilities of the two 
IMaxys, bleeding already beyond endurance as they 
watched the scene on Calvary. At this moment a 
man ventures to do what, under the circumstances, 
required a high degree of moral courage. Some one 
is seen about dusk knocking at the palace of Pilate, — 
not a poor and obscure man who had nothing at stake, 
but a rich Jew, and a member of the highest Jewish 
council; and Pilate must have been surprised when 
Joseph of Arimathea came into his hall and begged 
for the body of one of the crucified malefactors, — thus 
showing, even at that hour of peril and darkness, and 
before the storm of passions had spent its rage, that 
he sympathized with him and his cause. Pilate whites 
an order for the delivery of the body; and Joseph 
goes with it and takes the body out of the keeping of 
the brutal soldiers, and wraps it in clean linen cloth. 

Jerusalem, says Joseph us, was surrounded with 
gardens owned by the vrealthier residents of the city, 
and sometimes beautifully shaded and ornamented. 
It so happened that the garden of Joseph was not far 
from the place of crucifixion, and in it was a sepulchre 
just hewn out of limestone rock, such being the com- 
position of the rocks about the city. Joseph and 
Nicodemus, both of them secret disciples of Jesus, 
and both members of the Jewish Sanhedrim, laid the 



172 THE EXCARXATIOX OF THE SOX OF MAX. 

body in this sepulclire. The two 3Iarys, Magdalene 
and the mother of James, had followed into the gar- 
den and were sitting at a little distance over opposite 
the month of the tomb, as it was deposited in the 
clean recess, and there left lying npon the bier. The 
door is closed, and a great stone rolled against it. 
Night comes down npon the great tragedy ; and what 
a night to those disciples who had seen their fondest 
hopes that day sink down in blood ! 

The triumph of the Jewish council seems complete. 
The man is out of the way whose rebukes had stung 
them to the quick, and who was undermining their 
authority, while the populace were flocking after him 
in crowds. But he predicted that he should rise again 
the third day. " AVhat if his disciples should steal 
away the body, declare the prediction fulfilled, and so 
trouble us again l'^ Under this apprehension they 
petition Pilate for a guard ; and sixteen Roman sol- 
diers are placed about the sepulchre, four watching at 
a time, while the rest are reclining about, thus re- 
lievinp; each other throuo^h the four watches of the 
night. 

Saturday passes away, and none but the few dis- 
ciples think of tlie tragic events of yesterday. The 
execution of state criminals of the lowest sort is soon 
to be forgotten. But the stricken disciples meet on 
that gloomy Sabbath for mutual condolence; and on 
Sabbath (Saturday) evening the women agree together 
on a last mournful duty. The body has not been 
embalmed. It onlv lies in its windiuo-sheet and on 
its bier. They get their spices ready, and agree to 
meet togetlier at the tomb about sunrise, the next 



THE GREAT MORNING. 



173 



(that is Sunday) morning, for this office of love. How 
many there were who had made this appointment we 
do not know. The names of the two Marys and Sa- 
lome are given, and Mark mentions other women.'^ 
But before the hour appointed a scene took place at 
the tomb they little dreamed of. Let the reader note 
here the exact order of events, and he will see how 
the four Evangelists lock into each other with ex- 
quisite harmony. 

Saturday night has passed into the third watch. 
That is, it is between twelve and three o'clock ; and 
the four Roman soldiers sit watching at the door of 
the tomb, two on each side, while the other twelve are 
reclining and sleeping about. Suddenly the earth 
jars beneath them, shock after shock ; they wake up, 
and in the darkness of the third watch there comes a 
blaze of light that fills the garden, and glares down 
the avenues of trees, and makes the smallest objects 
visible. In the midst of it a man appears whom they 
dare not challenge, for his face darts radiances which 
afPect them like strokes of lightning, and his raiment 
shines, not by reflected light, but with a dazzling 
whiteness like that of snow in the sunbeams. He 
touches the stone, and it rolls from the sepulchre, 
whose door flies open, and then he seems to sit down 
upon the stone, as if assuming to be the guard of the 
place. Of course it is not long before the drowsy 
soldiers are wide awake, and rushing in terror from 
the garden. 

All this has taken place before break of day. 
Meanwhile Mary Magdalene has started for the place 
of appointment. Her thoughts ran on the events of 
15 * 



174 THE EXCAEXATIOX OF THE S;)X OF MAX. 

Friday afternoon, and that corpse in Joseph's tomb, 
whose pale features have been before her all niglit 
long. She does not wait for the sunrise, or for the 
other women, but starts in the dim twilight and 
walks on. But as she comes to the garden limit she 
sees what fills her with alarm. The tomb door is 
wide open. Somebody has been here during the night. 
She sees not the angel, for he has disappeared from 
the stone, and is watching at the bier, inside. She 
only sees the open door, and her thought is, The 
Jews have robbed the tomb, to vent their last rage 
upon the body'^; and she runs back to the city and 
tells Peter and John. 

Those two disciples immediately repair to the place, 
Mary Magdalene following timidly and more slowly 
after them. John outruns the sturdy Peter and comes 
up first, and looks down into the sepulchre to see if 
tlie body indeed be gone. Peter comes up, and with 
characteristic boldness rushes past John down into 
the recess, and finds that it is even so. The body is 
gone. The woman's apprehensions are right, and the 
Jews doubtless have stolen it; and with this impres- 
sion they both return to the city. 

But Mary Magdalene, who had followed back 
asain, lino^ers fondly at the door of the tomb after 
the other two have departed ; sitting there and wxep- ' 
ing over this new and unexpected sorrow. At length 
she ventures to the door and looks in to see the bier 
which had held its precious load, when, lo ! two men 
in white clothing appear, one at the head and the 
other at the foot of the bier. One of them is the 
selfsame angel that terrified the guard, but now inside 



THE GREAT MOENIXG. 



175 



the tomb instead of outside, and another appears with 
him. "'^Ndiv weepest thou?"' he says to Mary. ••Be- 
cause/" she replies^ •'they have taken a^Yay my Lord, 
and I know not where they have laid him."' And 
turniug to go. she sees Jesus himself standing l3efore 
her. But it is yet dusk, and her eyes are bent - ^ 
ward and blinded with tears, and she does nor v 
nize him. He speaks : Vrhy vreepest thou ? AVhom 
seekest thou?*' She supposes from these words that 
he is the gardener, whose questions imply that she is 
an intruder upon his grotiud. ^*Tell me where thou 
hast laid him, and I will take him out of yottr way."' 
Jesus now speaks in the old, familiar tones, and says, 
"Mary." She looks up, opeus her eyes in amaze- 
ment, sobs out, " My dear master I'' and clings con- 
vulsively 10 those feet which she had washed and 
wiped with her hair. 

AThile this is taking j)lace, the other women are on 
the road with their spices and balm. The appointed 
hour arrives when they were to be at the septtlchre. 
The shadows of the night have fled, and the first shaft 
of sunlight is shooting across the hills. As the other 
women come up, they are consulting how they shall 
get into the tomb, when they see that it is already 
open, and they pass on and enter in, supposing that 
some other of their company had got there before 
them, and found means of entrance. So they descend 
into the recess. They have hardly time to look for 
the body, when several beings in shining garments 
are seen hovering about the spot where the Lord had 
lain. The spiritual sight of the women is not touched 
precisely alike, or opened to ihe same extent in all. 



176 THE EXCARXATIOX OF THE SOX OF MAX. 



One of tliem sees one angel at the riglit of tlie bier. 
Others see two, one at the head and tlie other at the 
foot : each sees according to her state of perception, 
and each enough for the message she is to receive. 
That message is, He is not here, he is risen. Go, 
tell the news to his disciples.^^ The women bow down 
and hide their faces till they have recovered from 
their throbbing emotions and their holy surprise, and 
then emerge from the sepulclire and run to seek the 
disciples with the joyful tidings. But scarcely have 
they got beyond the garden gate, when Jesus himself 
appears before them, not as to Mary, in the dusk of 
morning, but now in the broad light of day. He 
meets them with his ^^All hail and they fall down 
and cling around his feet, and tremble and worship. 

Such were the events of what has been appropri- 
ately called the great morning." Their order of 
succession is lucid enoujih. 

1. The descent of the angel, who opens the tomb, 
disperses the guard, and then retires within the 
sepulchre. 

2. The approach of Mary in the dusk, who sees 
only the open tomb, and runs back to tell Peter and 
John. 

3. The visit of those two disciples to the place, 
who see nothins: and return. 

4. The appearance of the two angels to Mary, who 
had come back again, followed by the first appear- 
ance of the Lord Jesus. 

5. The coming up of the other women at the ap- 
pointed hour, who go into the tomb, where one sees 
one angel and another two. 



THE GP.EAT MORXIXG. 



177 



6. Their departure, and their meeting Jesus by 
the way. 

All the difficulties, or seeming discrepancies, in the 
four narratives, have grown out of the most absurd 
assumption that the angels appeared in bodies like 
ours, and to the mortal senses. The variations are just 
what they would be to the variant perceptions of the 
half-opened spiritual vision. John and Peter saw 
nothing, some of the women probably saw nothing, 
and doubtless none of them saw all. '^"e do not 
imagine that the divine messengers had been absent 
from any part of that scene of sorrow and dismay on 
Friday afternoon, as they certainly were not absent 
from Gethsemane the night before. True, the Eonian 
soldiers might not know it till the gleaming terrors 
dispersed them ; and the women saw but one or two 
among the divine powers that engirded and guarded to 
its sure accomplishment the central fact in the world's 
history, and heralded the victory of the Son of God 
over death and the grave. 

M 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE FIEST MEETING. 

So the morning was ushered in. What we have 
now related took place during the last watch, that is, 
from three o'clock to six. What followed during tlie 
day is of scarcely less importance. Christ has not 
yet appeared to any of the Apostles, and they will not 
believe that he is risen. The women come and tell 
what they have seen. Idle rumors these,'^ say they 
among themselves, " for it cannot be. They are the 
stories of excited women. Peter and John have been 
there and seen nothing.'' Thus the morning hours 
have passed, and early in the afternoon two of the 
disciples set out from Jerusalem to travel on foot to 
Eramaus, a town which lies about seven and a half 
miles distant. One of them was Cleopas, a brother 
probably of the Joseph who was the husband of the 
mother of Christ. Who the other w^as, w^e are not 
told. It might have been Nathanael. They both 
belonged to that inner circle of friends who had been 
drawn so closely unto Jesus, and ^yho now felt all the 
sorrow^s of a natural bereavement. They want to get 
out of the city with its noise and din, now" the scene 
of that dreadful tragedy whose shadow lies heavy on 
their hearts. Past the gates of the city, they un- 
burden their minds to each other. '^Alas! it is all 

178 



THE FIRST MEETING. 



179 



over. How bitterly have we been disappointed ! 
We thought him beyond the power of his enemies. 
On what a height he stood, and what a glory sur- 
rounded him ! We thought him the Messiah, and 
that he would redeem us from the Roman yoke. But 
he is dead ! He mistook his own power and mission, 
and all our hopes have ended on that bloody cross.'' 
While this conversation is going on, a third person 
joins them and walks with them. It is Christ him- 
self, but his appearance is so different from that before 
his crucifixion that the two disciples do not know him. 
He reproves their doubts, discourses to them divinely 
from the Scriptures, opens their meaning, and shows 
them Christ out of the Old Testament in such a warm 
blaze of light that their hearts burn under his words. 
Charmed and animated by his discourse, they arrive 
at Emmaus, and they make him go in to eat with 
them ; when, instead of sitting down as a guest, he 
sits at the head of the table, and breaks the bread as 
the symbol of the bread of life. They look up into 
his face, and through his altered appearance his out- 
beaming Divinity breaks upon them, the same glori- 
fied features that had thrilled them so often before, 
and they recognize their Lord. And then he becomes 
suddenly invisible (d^'avroc). 

The day speeds on to the great evening. Since 
morning the Lord has appeared unto Peter. How 
or where, we are not told. But the news runs from 
one disciple to another, Peter also hath seen the 
Lord, and so it cannot be an unfounded rumor, or 
the mere imagination of -those women at the tomb.'' 
This new announcement makes them easier and 



180 THE EXCARXATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

breathless^ and Ihe eleven are called together with 
some others to hear Peter tell his story. They all 
assemble except Thomas, who perhaps has not heard 
of the good tidings. Meanwhile the two. disciples at 
Emmaus speed swiftly back to Jerusalem, to tell what 
they have seen, and they arrive in season for the meet- 
ing. It was probably in that upper room where they 
had been wont to meet together, and whose walls were 
now fragrant with the memories of Jesus. They have 
locked fast the door, lest some of the Jewish police 
should break in upon them. Peter has told his mar- 
velous tale, and it has fallen into thirsting ears. Then 
the men from Emmaus stand up to corroborate the 
story ; are telling of the conversation by the way ; 
how he unveiled the meaning of the laAV, the prophets, 
and the Psalms, and made them a continuous chain 
of light; and how, when he broke the bread, the 
same divine face they had known before beamed 
over the table. They have not done speaking when 
Jesus himself is seen standing in the midst of the 
little company ; and he interrupts the narrative with 
his heavenly benediction, Peace be unto you V' They 
are affrighted from the sudden and unexpected ap- 
pearance ; they distrust their eyes, and think it a 
spectre and not a reality. Christ, in order to assure 
them, appeals also to their sense of touch. ^' Handle 
me and see ! A spectre has not flesh and bones, as 
ye see me to have. Behold my hands and my feet ; 
touch them, and know that it is I myself.^' They 
touch them and wonder, and half believe, in a de- 
lirium of joy. To confirm their faith still more, he 
commands food to be brought, — a piece of broiled 



THE FIRST MEETIXG. 



181 



fish aud of honeycomb, — and sits down and eats with 
them; and as he eats, he opens to them the Scrip- 
tures, showing how this is the Christ of the Old 
Testament, and how all the lines of prophecy con- 
verge here in their glorious fulfillment. And so 
closes the first Christian Sabbath, and with what a 
contrast to the gloom of the previous evening ! 



13 



CHAPTER lY, 



THE SECOND MEETING. 

One week passes away, during which these won- 
derful events are constant themes of conversation 
among the disciples. Thomas was not there, and he 
will not believe even the united testimony of the 
other ten. He thinks their senses may have deceived 
them, and he will not be satisfied without a surer test 
than has yet been applied. True, you have seen 
and touched some one whom you think to have been 
the Lord Jesus ; but it could not have been the same 
person who was nailed to the tree, whose heart Avas 
pierced by the soldier's spear, and who was laid as a 
corpse in Joseph^s tomb. I will not believe it unless 
I can put my finger into the fatal wounds themselves. 
Some other person might counterfeit his appearance, 
but nobody would counterfeit these.'^ His doubts 
have been regarded as criminal and unreasonable; 
but they were perfectly natural, and in strict accord- 
ance with the laws of the human mind ; and the test 
which he insists upon was precisely the one which 
would be likely to occur to a person of clear, prac- 
tical reason, who, amid the excitements of the hour, 
resolved not to be imposed upon by false appearances. 
It is one of the numerous incidents whose air of per- 

182 



THE SECOND MEETING. 



183 



feet naturalness affords unmistakable evidence of the 
entire truthfulness of the narratives. 

A second Sunday evening comes round, and the 
disciples assemble again, probably at the same upper 
room, careful now to have the doubting disciple with 
them, and saying to him and to each other, Perhaps 
he will appear again.'^ The doors, as before, are shut 
and fastened. The word used does not necessitate 
the inference that the doors were locked, but the 
wdiole connection clearly does. Doubtless their hearts 
were throbbing with expectation. They are not dis- 
appointed, for, behold, the same benignant form rises 
in the midst of them, and drops the benediction, 
" Peace be unto you Then' he turns specially to 
Thomas, ''Peacli hither thy finger and behold my 
hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into 
my side, and be not faithless, but believing.'^ The 
doubter comes up under a supernatural awe, and feels 
cautiously for the scars, and gasps out, ^' O my Lord 
and my God!" There is a twofold reason for his 
amazement. He not only wonders at seeing his mas- 
ter, but at finding his own thoughts known, and the 
very language in which his doubts had been expressed 
given back to him, indicating a knowledge which was 
more than human. We are not told how Christ was 
parted from his disciples on this and the former oc- 
casion ; but it is evident from the entire complexion 
of the narrative, that he did not tarry with them dur- 
ing the intermediate time; and the inference is, that 
he went suddenly as he came, or, as at Emmaus, be- 
came invisible. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE MEETING IN GALILEE. 

The Sea of Galilee lies some eighty miles nortli- 
east of Jerusalem, and has been very well called the 
Lake Geneva of Palestine. It is a clear mirror, deep- 
set in a beautiful framework of hills. The hills rise 
precipitous on all sides and shut out the winds, except 
when some transient gust finds its way over them to 
break up the surface of the otherwise smooth and 
ever-peaceful waters. The shores of this lake in the 
days of our Saviour were thickly studded with cities 
and villages. They extended from the edge of the 
waters up the sides of the hills, and sometimes over 
their level summits. The country, lying on the west 
or the Galilean side, is described by Josephus as un- 
surpassed in beauty and fertility. ^' Its nature is 
wonderful," he says, " producing the fruits of all the 
climates and zones." 

On the shores of this lake, and among these cities 
and villages, our Saviour began his public ministiy. 
He sailed over its waters, and traveled around its 
borders, working miracles, and uttering his Divine 
messao^e ; and there the multitudes thronged around 
him, always eager to see and hear. Near the head of 
the lake was the mount on w^hich the first sermon was 
preached to listening crowds, since called the Mount 

181 



THE MEETING IN GALILEE. 



185 



of the Beatitudes. Somewhere in the same region 
was the Mount of Transfiguration. The Sea of Gali- 
lee, therefore, and the hills that rise up around it, 
were clothed in the dearest memories in the earliest 
ministry of Jesus. Not here did he meet the hard 
defiance of Jewish bigotry and hate, but the people 
were yielding and receptive beneath his word. Here 
he had found his first disciples as humble fishermen, 
and here most o£ his converts were made and still re- 
sided. Therefore he annoanced, even before his death, 
that he should appear after that event among his con- 
verts in Galilee ; and the first message to the eleven, 
after his resurrection, was, " Hasten up to Galilee, for 
I shall meet my people there." IS^ot only the time 
had been appointed, but the place too ; and it was 
one of the mountains on the shores of the lake, prob- 
ably the very one where he had met them before, and 
which, therefore, was hallowed by the recollection of- 
sweet Sabbatic hours. 

The town of Bethsaida stood on the western shore 
of the lake, and was the birthplace and early residence 
of two of the disciples, namely, Andrew and Peter. 
Here Jesus found them, and d^ew them into his band 
of followers. Hither one of them has come again, 
and probably both, having traveled from Jerusalem 
in anticipation of the meeting upon the mountain.'^ 
In company with Peter have come Thomas, Na- 
thanael, and the two brothers James and John, who 
revisit the shore where Jesus first found them " mend- 
ing their nets," and called them into his train. These 
are all w^aiting together, probably at Bethsaida, think- 
ing of the marvelous events they have just witnessed 

16 * 



186 THE EXCAENATION OF THE SOX OF MAN. 



at Jerusalem^ and looking forward with eager hopes 
to the appointed day. The converts all along the 
Galilean shore have doubtless heard the strano-e ru- 
mors, and they, too, have been warned of the spot 
and the hour at which they are to assemble, when the 
Crucified will appear among them. 

Before the appointed day has arrived, Peter, with 
his fellow-travelers, looking out at evening on the ex- 
panse of waters over which they have sailed so often, 
is reminded of his old business, and proposes that 
they try their skill at it again. It must have been 
now in the last quarter of the waning moon, whose 
light, therefore, glimmered rather feebly upon the 
lake. They row all night without success, and seeing 
the morning glance over the hills and begin to purple 
the waves, they make for the shore. As they near it, 
thev discern in the twilio;ht a strano^er's form stanclino^ 
on the banks, wlio calls to them, and asks if they 
have caught anything. Being answered jn the nega- 
tive, he tells them to cbop the net on the right side 
of the ship. They obey, and the net is immediately 
filled ; whereupon John whispers to Peter, " It is the 
Lord.'' Peter cannot wait for the ship to come 
ashore, but snatches his upper garment, which in row- 
ing he had thrown off, girds it about him again, and 
plunges into the water and swims ashore in his im- 
petuous haste to greet his Master. The incident is 
strikingly characteristic, and Peter's whole character 
appears in it. The others come up afterward in the 
ship and step ashore, when Jesus invites them to a 
repast on the fish they had caught, and, taking up his 
usual representative style, lie charges Peter while 



THE MEETING IX GALILEE. 



187 



they are eating, " Feed mv sheep, feed my himbs." 
They feared to ask him, Who art thoii?'^ and the 
inference from the Avliole cast of the narrative is, that 
thej saw and felt that there was something super- 
natural in his appearance, and that it overshadowed 
their minds with an indescribable awe. 

All this, however, is only preparatory to tliat meet- 
ing upon ^^the mountain," where all the Galilean 
converts are to have an opportunity of seeing the 
Lord. Probably the eleven were there, with divers 
others from Jerusalem. Would that Matthew or 
John might have given us another stroke of the pen 
in describing it, though without any description we 
readily conceive with what throbs of feeling they 
hastened up to the spot. It has been supposed that 
this was the assemblage of the five hundred breth- 
ren/' who Paul says were at once made witnesses of 
the Lord's resurrection. We are convinced from all 
the circumstances that it was probably so. There is 
some slight ground for conjecture that the appointed 
mountain Avas the very one which had been the scene 
of the transfiguration. " Tell the vision to no man, 
till after I am risen from the dead;'' — words possibly 
suggested by the thought that on this very height 
there would then be another transfiguration, not pri- 
vately, but before the assembled people. " Say noth- 
ing of this noAV, they Avould not believe your story 
about it, but they shall be eycAvitnesses of another." 
Be that as it may, they come ; the five hundred 
brethren throng the summits of the mountain at the 
appointed hour, and he appears to them much as he 
did to the three disciples, amid the dazzling glories 



188 THE EXCARXATIOX OF THE SOX OF MAX. 



of that former scene. His personal appearance on 
this latter occasion is not described^ but his words 
imply, that in first things and last, in his inmost 
nature and outermost form, he had put on the power 
of the Highest. ''All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth. Go je and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the 
Son and of the Holy Ghost. Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world I'' John says 
of one of these occasions, and we infer from the con- 
nection that it applies also to this : " He breathed on 
them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." AVe 
think the commentators are signally at fault in moil- 
ing at this passage. It does not mean that he breathed 
on them with his mouth, as if the air out of his luno^s 
was the Holy Ghost. It means that his outward form 
had become so glorified as to fit the Divine plenitude 
within and become perfectly transmissive. So that 
when he appeared, the power that went from him was 
the Divine breathing from his whole person, and it 
came to his disciples like pulsings of celestial air. 
The language of Paul implies that this meeting of 
the five hundred was ever memorable, and was after- 
ward recounted over and over as unimpeachable tes- 
timony, so long as any of them survived to tell the 
story. Such was our Lord's appearance that the mul- 
titude, with few exceptions, bowed down their faces 
and worshiped.* 

^ Compare Matt, xxviii. 16, 20; John xx. 21-23; 1 Cor. xv. 6. 



CHAPTEK Yl. 



THE LAST 3IEETIXG^ AXD THE ASCEXSIOX. 

Xeaely forty clays have now passed since the 
thrilling incidents of the great morning, during which 
time Christ has frequently manifested himself to his 
disciples. AVe have no right to infer that the Evan- 
gelists, in their exceedingly brief narratives, have 
told us of every meeting that took place. On the 
other hand, it is reasonable to suppose that his com- 
munications to his risino; Church, and his charo:e to 
his chosen Apostles, embraced a great many things 
which have not been specially recorded. A last meet- 
ing with them is appointed at Jerusalem. The Feast 
of Pentecost is now close at hand. The eleven hasten 
back from the familiar scenery around the shores of 
the Sea of Galilee, and some of the Galilean converts 
go with them, probably some of the "five hundred 
bi^ethren,'^ on their way to a last meeting with their 
risen Lord. The meeting may have taken place in 
that same " upper room," which had been hallowed 
by the tender communings of the last supper. They 
are conscious that they are now to see him for the last 
time, and it is very natural that they should seek to 
be satisfied cn a subject Avhich had filled them so often 
with doubt r.nd anxiety. They thought him the prom- 
ised Messiah ; " but if so,'"' how often had they said 

ISO 



190 THE EXCAEXATIOX OF THE SON OF MAN. 



among themselves, " why does he not assert his power 
and majesty, and restore Israel to her ancient freedom 
and grandeur ?" And when he was crushed appa- 
rently beneath the Jewish and Eoman authorities, 
their hopes subsided into despair. But behold ! he 
rises and reappears, and now their hopes rise with 
him again, and they expect at this last meeting some 
disclosure of his plan. They venture to put the 
question, " Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again 
the kingdom of Israel He sees that as yet they 
do not comprehend the nature of his reign ; he goes 
into no explanations, but tells them to w^ait at Jerusa- 
lem until the Feast of Pentecost, which will com- 
mence in a few days, and then they shall have a 
practical answer to their inquiry. " Ye shall receive 
poAver after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; 
and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, 
and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the utter- 
most parts of the earth. The nature of this new 
power which they are to receive they do not as yet 
understand, though they have some conception of the 
source of it as they bow before their risen Lord and 
feel the new effluence that passes over them in wave- 
lets like the breezes of heaven. 

The town of Bethany was about two miles from 
Jerusalem, and on the opposite side of the Mount of 
Olives. Coming out of the city, and crossing the 
brook Cedron, that flows through the valley of Jehosh- 
aphat, and passing the garden of Gethsemane, they 
come to a path that winds up the slope of the moun- 
tain to its summit; and there on one side they have 
Jerusalem spread beneath them, its temple gleaming 



THE LAST MEETING, AND THE ASCENSION. 191 

ill Orient splendor ; and just over the brow of the hill-, 
on the other side, the modest village of Bethany, where 
Lazarus and his sisters dwell. How often had this 
path been trodden by the Saviour's feet, back and 
forth between Bethany and the city ! Here he passed 
along in his last journey up to Jerusalem on the eve 
of his crucifixion, and here it was that the children 
shouted hosannas, and strewed the way with palms. 
And this is the road which he now passes over again, 
at his last meeting with his disciples. One writer 
supposes that it is at early dawn, since we do not read 
that they met any one by the way. He is in close 
communion with them, giving them promises of the 
Holy Ghost, and they seem to know, as did the attend- 
ants of Elijah, that this is the last charge to them, 
and they hang with rapt attention upon his words. 
They have reached the top of the hill where Bethany 
comes in sight : the clear blue is above them, and 
their most beloved haunts all around and beneath 
them, perhaps bathed in the first splendors of the 
morning. While the Lord is speaking, his form rises 
and grows indistinct, till it seems to melt into a cloud 
that floats above their heads, and they stand and gaze 
upon its folds with wonder-stricken faces. At the same 
moment two men in white apparel appear standing by, 
who speak to them : Ye men of Galilee, why stand 
ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus who is 
taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like 
manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.'' And 
the disciples bowed reverently on the place of the holy 
scene, and returned to Jerusalem, there to wait the ful- 
fillment of the blessed promises they had heard. 



CHAPTEK VII. 



THEOEIES. 

Feom these distinct groupings of the circumstances, 
we get a clear view of the events included between 
the moment of our Saviour's death on the cross, to 
the moment of his reunion with the Father in the 
heavens ; and we are now prepared to understand in 
some measure the nature and the mighty significance 
of these fundamental facts of the Gospel. 

We observe, first, and before coming to the heart 
of our subject, that the opinion has been entertained 
and defended, that Christ not only rose in the natural 
body, but ascended in the natural body into heaven ; 
that the very corpse which hung on the fatal tree was 
revived and taken up through the planetary spaces to 
some place where God specially resides; and in close 
congruity with this opinion is the notion that he there 
exhibits his wounds to the Father, in order to make 
him placable toward the human race. This is his 
work of intercession, — always to point to his wounds 
or scars, and on the ground of his vicarious sufferings 
plead for mercy toward those who believe in him. 
Such is another abortion of religious naturalism ; and 
we only state it that our readers may have a view of 
the whole case. "We certainly shall not take up time 
in addressing an argument to that mind which can 

192 



THEORIES. 



193 



entertain such conceptions of Christ's resurrection and 
redemption. 

Turning away from this ghastly theology to what 
promises some reward to investigation, we find the 
theories wdiich have been applied to the foregoing 
facts dividing themselves mainly into two. 

The first is the purely spiritual theory. It sup- 
poses that the crucified body was dissipated in the 
tomb, being there resolved back into its gaseous ele- 
ments so as to disappear entirely ; and tliat Christ 
arose in the spiritual body, and w^as only appre- 
hensible to the spiritual senses of the disciples, couch- 
ed and opened for that very purpose. He became 
visible to them at times in the same way that the 
angels became visible, — that is, through a subjective 
change in the beholders, and his apparent ascension 
into heaven was simply the closing again of this inner 
faculty of perception, so that they saw him no more. 

This view has been received and defended in all 
ages of the Christian Church. It was held by Clement 
of Alexandria, by Origen, by Chrysostom, and it is 
understood to prevail in the Roman Catholic Church, 
where it holds some relation to the doctrine of tran- 
"Bubstantiation. More recently it has been brouglit 
out with great distinctness, and defended with con- 
spicuous ability, by writers of another school, and 
everything which argument and learned exegesis can 
render in its favor may be found displayed in a treatise 
by Hindmarsh on the resurrection of Christ, and a 
more recent one by Professor Bush, on the same sub- 
ject. Its alleged proofs are mainly as follows : — 

1. Christ was seen by no one after his resurrection, 
17 N 



194 THE EXCARXATION OF THE SOX OF MAN. 

except by his own friends and followers. 'Not the 
least intimation is dropped anywhere that it was a 
fact of public notoriety, or that the Jews were wit- 
nesses of it. If they had been, all Jerusalem would 
have been filled vvith wonder and commotion ; his 
murderers would have been overwhelmed at the sight, 
and w^e should have had some relation of it in the 
Evangelic narratives. Moreover, Paul, in enumerating 
the "witnesses" of the resurrection, names none but 
personal followers. "He was seen by Cephas, then 
by the tv/clve, after that by about five hundred 
brethren at once, after that by James, then by all the 
Apostles.'' But if he rose again in the natural body, 
why was he not seen walking the streets of Jeru- 
salem on that great morning, and why was not all 
Judsea, and indeed all Palestine, made a witness of an 
event so important and astounding ? 

2. But, again, Christ was not seen, even by his 
own friends and followers, except at special times and 
on special occasions. Where was he during the inter- 
vals? Where did he abide, or with whom did he 
live? During the forty days' sojourn on the earth, 
why are we not told of his travelings to and fro? 
Whenever he appears to his disciples, he takes them by 
surprise, and the interview is short ; which shows con- 
clusively that at other times they had no know^ledge 
of the place where he was, and that they did not even 
conceive of him as living in any locality upon the earth. 

3. The manner of his appearance and disappear- 
ance proves that he did not inhabit a body which was 
subject to the laws of space and time. He vanishes 
out of their sight, or becomes suddenly invisible. He 



THEORIES. 



195 



appears su(]denly among tbera^ Avhile the doors are 
shut and bolted. He does not meet them by travel- 
ing from place to place. The two disciples who saw 
him at Emmaus hasten to Jerusalem to tell the tale, 
and lo ! he is there with them. They journey away 
to Galilee, eighty miles and more, and Christ is there. 
They come back to Jerusalem, and he is there. Had 
he, like them, traveled through the intermediate space ? 
If so, wdiy did he not go and return with them, as his 
custom used to be ? 

4. Such was the entire transformation, that his 
nearest friends did not know him after his resurrec- 
tion. Mary recognized him at the tomb, not through 
his appearance, but through the tones of his voice. 
The two disciples walk and converse with him through 
a good part of seven miles, and sit down with him at 
table, and yet they know him not. And the reason 
of this is not to be mistaken, for the narrator ex- 
pressly avers that he appeared in another form. 

5. The whole color of the narratives shows that the 
intercourse between Jesus and his disciples was on an 
entire new basis after his resurrection. There is an 
awful distance between them, totally unlike the old 
familiarity, and their minds are impressed with the 
fact that this intercourse is not normal, but super- 
natural. Hence his words to Mary, " Touch me not 
hence the spell laid on their faculties in the upper 
room, by the Sea of Galilee, and on the mountain 
where the five hundred assembled. It was not the 
former colloquial intercourse, but their minds were 
bowed down in posture of adoration, as if beneath 
some demonstration from a supernal world. 



196 THE EXCARXATIOX OF THE SOX OF MAX. 



6. The language which is used to describe the post- 
resurrection appearances of Christ is pecul'ar and dis- 
tinctive. It is equivalent to the expression, "He 
made himself visible.'' It does not indicate the jour- 
neying from place to place for the purpose of meeting 
a friend, but rather the unveiling of his person from 
a superior state to the cognizance of those who were 
suddenly made sensible of his presence. 

It is vain to deny that some of these reasons are 
cogent and strong; and, in the absence of counter- 
vailing testimony, they would be irresistibly conclu- 
sive. But there are opposing facts, too clearly stated 
and too stubborn to be reasoned away. They are as 
follows : — 

1. The entire phenomena at the tomb on the great 
morning. Why are we brought there at all to see 
the open door, and to look down through the awful 
recess? If Christ arose only in the spiritual body, 
what more have we to do with the natural body or 
the place where it lay? Nothing whatever. Spirit- 
ual body does not pass through natural space, and it 
did not need the stone to be rolled away, or the tomb 
door to be opened, in order to its emergence into the 
spirit-world. Christ would have passed into the other 
life, as all men do, by ordinary death, — the spirit- 
body being evolved from the natural, and the latter 
left to the usual process of decay. Yet the angel 
descends, removes the stone, and opens the door, as if 
for the body to emerge from its recess, whereupon the 
body disappears from within the tomb, leaving its 
grave-clothes behind, and Jesus immediately after is 



THEORIES. 



197 



seen standing without ; and if, after all, there was no 
resurrection of the natural body, these appearances 
are the most systematic and stupendous illusion to 
the senses that history has anywdiere described. 

2. Christ avers that he is not a mere spirit, but 
that he appears in a body of veritable flesh and 
bones ; and he invites them to test the fact by the 
sense of touch as well as sight. We are told that 
there is spiritual touch as well as spiritual sight, and 
that these wwds have an important spiritual mean- 
ing ; that the idea of the times was, that a spirit was 
nothing but a phantom, and that Christ noW' intended 
to dissipate that fantasy from their minds. All this 
may be so. But the fact which here stands out in 
boldest and sharpest outline is this : — that Christ im- 
presses on their senses the truth that he is clothed in 
flesh and bones, — that is, material substance : they so 
understand him, and he means they shall so under- 
stand him ; — and if, after all, there were no flesh and 
bones in the case, then w^e think that the science of 
hermeneutics is worthless, and that we cannot be sat- 
isfied that the Bible has a literal sense anywhere on 
which its truths may repose secure. 

3. Christ not only offers to Thomas the test of 
touch, but gives him assurance that he is touching 
the same body that was wounded upon the cross. He 
oelieves it, and on that ground rests his conviction 
of the Lord's resurrection. To say that this ground 
was specious and false, would seem to us to involve 
the supposition that his Master studied and practiced 
an imposition wpon his disciples. 

4. Christ ate with his disciples after his resurrec- 

17 * 



198 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



tioii, and ate natural food, — ^' broiled fish and honey- 
comb.'^ Not only so, but he ate before them for the 
avowed object of convincing them that he had flesh 
and bones." To suppose that spiritual bodies partake 
of material food implies an incongruity and anomaly 
that shocks the reason, and the case is not rendered a 
whit more rational to our minds by quotations from 
Genesis, which are su23posed to assert the same thing 
of angels. As we do not believe that any such thing 
is there asserted or implied,* we reject all such inter- 
pretations, and receive this passage in its obvious and 
literal meaning. 

We conclude, then, that Christ arose in the same 
body that was crucified. This, however, does not 
imply that there was no important change in it, and 
that his post-resurrection appearances and relations 
w^ere the same as before. That they were very differ- 
ent we readily grant, as, indeed, the arguments which 
we have above displayed most clearly demonstrate. 
But they demonstrate nothing more. They show a 
change of some kind in the natural body, and its 
methods of appearing ; but, taken in connection with 
all the facts, the reader will judge whether they do 
not fail utterly in showing that Christ rose only in a 
spiritual form. 

^ Genesis ix. 1. The word there rendered angels is from "l^"^, 
which means "a messenger of God, whether an angel or pr^Dhet 
or priest." See Stuart's Lexicon. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THEOPwIES. 

We come to another view of the subject^ and one 
which has been more generally adopted^ as in strict 
accordance with all the facts of the narratives. It is 
that Christ rose in the natural body, bnt that it was 
changed for the glorified or celestial body during the 
forty days between his resurrection and ascension. 
The writers who adopt this view do not agree pre- 
cisely as to the time and the progress of this change, 
but they agree in the essential fact, and their diversi- 
ties of conception and statement do not seem to us of 
the least practical importance. Three shades of varia- 
tion may be distinguished. 

Thus, some of the early Fathers represent Christ 
after his resurrection as possessing the same body, but 
changed as to its qualities, and made "impassible, 
immortal, and incorruptible.'' In this class are 
reckoned Irenseus, TertuUian, Cyprian, and Augus- 
tine. In this class, too, are many of the scholastic 
writers of the Middle Ages. The early Lutheran 
divines are of the same belief, for they describe the 
Lord's post-resurrection body as endowed with the 
qualities of impalpability, invisibility, and illocal- 
ity," that is, we suppose, of assuming these qualities 
at will. Some German writers of the present day, 

199 



200 THE EXCAENATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

belonging to the orthodox school, take the same view, 
with only this difference, — ^that the process of trans- 
formation was not performed at once and at the tirxie 
of the resurrection, bat was gradual and progressive, 
extending through the whole forty days, and only 
completed at the ascension. Such is the view of 
Hahn, Olshausen, Hengstenberg, and several others.* 
Another class of writers suppose that this change was 
not gradual, but took place instantly at the ascension ; 
that during the forty days Christ had the same body 
as before his death, unchanged in its qualities ; but 
that at the moment he was "taken up'^ into heaven 
it was transformed and glorified, and fitted for the 
heavenly abodes. Such is the opinion defended by 
some of the Christian Fathers, — ^by Jerome with con- 
siderable fullness. It was adopted by Calvin and his 
followers, and more recently by Herder, Neander, and 
Tholuck, and more recently still by Professor Robin- 
son, in an article in the Biblical Repository already 
referred to. 

It will be perceived that these three classes of 
writers differ on a mere pundum temporis, the first 
supposing that the essential change took place on the 
resurrection morning; the second, that it was pro- 
gressive through forty days ; and the last, that it was 
accomplished at the moment of ascension ; all coming, 
however, to the same result, that the natural body 
was changed for the glorified body before Christ 
ascended out of his earthly relations to his place at 
God's right hand. But in none of them is there the 

^ Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1845, Article on Christ's Resurrec- 
tion, by Professor Eobinson. 



THEORIES. 



201 



least glimmer of light as to the essential nature of 
this change. Do they mean that the material body 
had some new qualities added to it, increasing its 
splendor and adajjtability, but remaining the same in 
essence as before, as a material body here may change 
from crass to fine, or from dull to bright ? or do they 
mean that it was changed, not only in external prop- 
erties, but also m internal essence ? or, what is more 
likely, do they use language without meaning any- 
thing more than that some change took place, they 
know not what, and may not presume to know ? 
This last, they would probably say ; and yet it is 
plain, that, until we get some clear conception on this 
point, we not only fail to discern the Lord's body," 
but have hardly advanced one step toward the appre- 
hension of a doctrine which occupies as a luminous 
centre the first place in the scheme of Christian truth, 
and, indeed, lights up the dull annals of this earth 
with a heavenly glow. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUE. 

Let the reader open alraost any chapter in the 
Evangelical narratives which describes Jesus in the 
days of his fleshly humiliation. Let him follow him, 
for instance^ in his journeyings on foot into the hum- 
ble lodgings of the sisters of Bethany, or on the night 
of his great sorrow into the protecting shadows of 
Gethsemane, where drops thick and heavy like gore 
oozed from his forehead and fell upon the ground as 
he bent down in prayer. Or let him follow into the 
judgment-hall of Pilate, and thence on the road 
toward Calvary, where Cnrist walks beneath the 
heavy beam on which he is to be nailed, till he faints 
and sinks under the load. 

And then let him open the first chaptei of the 
Apocalypse, where the Son of Man is described as 
walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, 
clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt 
about the breasts with a golden girdle ; his head and 
his hairs white as with a crown of dazzling snows, 
his eyes a*s a flame of fire, his feet like unto fine 
brass, as if they burned in a furnace, his voice as the 
sound of many waters, his word like a sharp-gleaming 
sword, his countenance like the sun shining in his 
strength, and the efiluent power and majesty such 

202 



THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR. 



203 



that the beloved disciple fell as dead beneath the 
unveiled and refulgent mercy. Having compared 
these two together, he will get some adequate idea of 
that change which Christ foreshadowed to his disci- 
ples when he spoke of the coming " glorification of 
the Son of ]Man.^^ 

And the nature and process of this change will 
begin to dawn upon him if he will follow with affec- 
tionate and reverent tread in the footsteps of his Lord. 
Let him first exclude and drive far away the idea that 
the glory on which Christ entered was a reward 
bestowed upon him for his sacrifices and labors ; so 
much splendor and consideration hereafter, for so 
much work and painful service done. He worked 
for no selfish end, and no personal reward. For 
man's sake was he crucified ; for man's sake no less 
was he glorified, and not for his own ; and without 
the latter and consummating event, — we have the 
Apostle's word for saying it, — his death would have 
been in vain. 

The end of Christ's incarnation was, that he mio-ht 
draw up into his own experience all the woes and 
temptations of humanity. For this purpose the 
Divine nature within was indued with the corruptible 
body without, and subjected to all human and mortal 
conditions. He was to help, not angels only, but 
men ; not men only, but men who lay the lowest, or 
Avho occupied the extremest verge of suffering and 
ruin. Hence the process of his incarnation was to 
draw around him all the ^wathings of our imperfect 
nature, and make its wants his own, till not a cry 
could go up frum it v,diich had not first come into his 



li 



204 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



own consciousness, and thence swept up between the 
righteous Son and Father." 

But after his humiliation, yea, along with it, and 
keeping chime with its results, was the inverse process 
of his glorification ; and what that was, the narratives 
make abundantly clear. It was the growth and put- 
ting on out of the divine life within of that divine 
body best adapted by its instrumentalities and organ- 
isms to help the weaknesses and supply the needs of 
our human nature,— weaknesses and needs of which 
he became successively conscious in his ow^n person. 
As the work of humiliation was accomplishing, the 
inverse or divine Avork was accomplishing too. One 
waxed as the other weaned, so that when the earthly 
body with its relations was extinct, the other might 
be complete in its power and glory. On this dark or 
earth-side of his nature, men saw the giief, the 
wounds, the temptation, and the agony; on the thither 
or the sun-side of the same nature, only his own 
select disciples, and they only at special times, had 
gleams of the coming on of the divine plenitude, till 
it was completely orbed and ultimated in that im- 
mortal body whose majesty and splendor were above 
the .summer's noon. 

We have said that one process was the inverse of 
the other. As fast as the divine substance from the 
life within took form and organism, the substances of 
the outward body w^ere excluded and dropped away. 
As fast as the divine life was coming out toward its 
fullness, the natural was waning toward its extinction. 
Before his crucifixion took place, the divine and 
glorified man had been ultimated in so much com- 



THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR. 



205 



pleteiiess of form, tliat the veilings of the natural 
body served hardly to conceal it, and once, from 
behind the coverings of sense, its glories broke forth 
and gave presage that its resurrection was nigh. 

Let the reader follow his Lord step by step through 
his path of humiliation, and he will have gleams of 
this double process, the natural and the earthly wan- 
ing, and the divine and the heavenly coming forth. 
There is an instance of this kind in John xii. 23-32. 
The whole passage is so impressive, that we quote it 
entire. The hour is come that the Son of Man 
should be glorified. Verily, I say unto you. Except 
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
alone ; but if it die, it bringetli forth much fruit. He 
that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth 
his life in this world shall keep it until life eternal. 
If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where 
I am, there shall also my servant be. If any man 
serve me, him will my Father honor. Now is my 
soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save 
me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto 
this hour. Father, glorify thy name ! Then came 
there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glori- 
fied it, and will glorify it again. The people, there- 
fore, that stood by and heard it said that it thundered; 
others said. An angel spake to him. Jesus answered, 
This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. 
Now is the judgment of this world ; now shall the 
prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be 
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.'' 
How clear is it that Jesus is here made intensely con- 
scious of this inward work of glorification, the very 

18 



206 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SOX OF MAN". 



heavens passing into liis soul so rapidly that they 
broke in angel-voices or muffled thunders on the air ! 
And how does he anticipate the hour, when, this pro- 
cess being complete, the natural body entirely excluded 
and the divine organism full-orbed and unobscured, 
the procession of the Holy S2:)irit should go from it 
like sunbeams from the orb of day, breaking with 
new power on the minds of men, and bringing tlie 
world to its crisis, casting out the prince of this 
world,^' and laying hold of his own people with 
stronger bands and dra\ving them up to himself with 
unresisted grace ! 

It hence becomes broadly manifest why the Holy 
Spirit could not be "given'^ until the Son of Man 
was glorified," — given, that is, in the sense that 
made it the special inheritance of the Christian 
Church, and through it a new and all-subduing power 
to change the face of the world. The Holy Spirit, 
as a new and special gift to humanity, was the pro- 
cession of Divine power from his glorified nature, 
and that could not be in its fullness till the double 
process we have spoken of was complei^e, — till the 
Divine plenitude from within had ultimated itself in 
the body and form which should be the medium of 
its forthgoings, and until all of the earthly and the 
natural had cleared away and vanished ; as clouds 
that obscured the noontide are broken and dissipated 
that they may give it full way to the earth's cold bosom, 
when the spring flowers leap up and laugh at the 
sun's appearing. 

At the last supper, when the traitor goes out from 
his presence and reminds him that his trial hour is 



THE GLORTFIED SAVIOUR. 



207 



near, the Saviour rises into a strain of rapture, — 
" Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glori- 
fied in him," — being made sublimely conscious that 
the inward and divine process is approaching its con- 
summation. And in that garden agony, where the 
last temptation occurred, when the extrusion and 
rending away of the natural, into which all the 
tempting fiends came with their final assault, made 
the great Redeemer bend low under a mountain-load 
of anguish, we are made cognizant of the same fact, 
— heaven coming in as hell was resisted and earth was 
waning ; coming with such influx that the face of a 
strengthening angel broke visible upon the scene. 

We have referred in a preceding page to the scene 
on Mount Tabor (or rather Mount Hermon, for there, 
more probably, Christ was transfigured), as illustrat- 
ing the truth that man's inward being is not a meta- 
physical abstraction, but an organism in human form, 
and more substantial than its material coverings. 
Christ was there seen in that body that lived immor- 
tally within the senses ; that body which the Jews 
could not crucify ; and the glorified prophets were 
seen, not as ^'mathematical points," but, we should 
naturally infer, as being clothed with a more imper- 
ishable corporeity. The transfiguration also illustrates 
the subject we have in hand. It unveils the process 
of the glorification of our Lord. It shows the spir- 
itual form of the Divine Man, as it had been put on 
from its first beginnings in the cradle at Bethlehem, 
till now it approached its fullness of time, and was 
almost ready to drop the cumbering bands of mor- 
tality. 



208 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



Hence a great portion of the language of Christ, 
which were otherwise obscure, becomes entirely trans- 
parent. He always spake as if he had an appointed 
time to remain on the earth, a fixed work to accom- 
plish, during the progress of which he must continue 
incarnate ; and until " his hour was come,'' the Jews 
had no power over his physical life. Twice he was 
delivered out of their hands in a mysterious way. 
But when " he knew that his hour was come," and 
that "the Father had delivered all things into his 
hands," he was given up unresistingly to the malice 
of his enemies. It was not that some blind fate had 
fixed the time of his death ; not that he had accom- 
plished everything possible in gaining converts or 
imparting truth to his disciples. His converts were 
very few, and his disciples, at the moment of his 
death, understood very little as to who and what he 
was. He might have lived on half a century more 
under the Divine protection, teaching the truth and 
gaining followers, and exhibiting to the world the 
charms and graces of his character, and then he would 
only have lived through the common period of hu- 
man existence. But the time came at thirty years 
of age when he could say, " It is finished," since the 
work for which he came into the world was done. 
What was it? Evidently the very thing we have 
been describing. It was his glorification. It was 
when the material had served its end as the basis of 
the spiritual, and within its continents that divine 
organism was completed whose processions of power 
were to come in Pentecostal gales, and sweep down 
our human nature till they woke from it new tongues 



THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR. 



209 



of utterance, and drew Ijric praises from all its 
strings.* 

* In connection with this topic, the reader is requested to open 
his mind to the import of the following passage: — ''Father, the 
hour is come ; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee ; 
as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give 
eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life 
eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth ; 
I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, 
O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory 
which I had with thee before time was." — John xvii. 1-5. 
18 * 



CHAPTER X. 



THE POST-RESUEEECTION BODY. 

Weiters on the subject of the resurrection are in 
the habit of speaking of the change of the natural 
body into the spiritual ; and one class suppose that 
Christ's body was so changed by instant miracle at 
his ascension. They imagine that this represents the 
transmutation which bodies raised out of the graves 
will have at the last day, and which the bodies of 
living men will then have before being received into 
heaven. 

We know of no particle of evidence that any such 
change will be effected, and to us it is philosophically 
inconceivable. There is no such thing as changing 
material substance into spiritual. We know of mat- 
ter only as a certain combination of external quali- 
ties ; we know of spiritual body only as a certain 
other combination : one combination may cease, and 
the other may take its place in orderly succession, but 
that would be a destruction and a new creation. Or 
one may exist within the other; spiritual body poten- 
tially within the natural, as the living ovum within 
the shell ; the latter may be extruded, and the former 
come forth and be clear of it. That is not changing 
natural body into spiritual, but causing it to be put 
off, that the other may come forth and take its place. 

Precisely this, as we conceive, Avas the change in 

210 



THE POST-EESUREECTION BODY. 



211 



the post-resurrection body of our Lord. He rose in 
the natural body, but its extrusion was rapid, and was 
completed at his ascension, after which he was seen 
no more by the natural eye. 

So we understand the Evangelic narratives. We 
will not dogmatize on the question, but remember we 
are treading on holy ground, and may not presume to 
know all that lies within these stupendous phenomena. 
It is clear to our apprehension, however, that our 
Lord^s subjective glorification was consummating at 
the moment of his crucifixion, and that when he ex- 
claimed, ^' It is finished,'^ the divine was becoming 
full-orbed within the natural ; that the material body 
was taken up from the sepulchre to l^e put off succes- 
sively, and by virtue of the divine plenitude from 
w^ithin, and that to this rapid transformation are to be 
ascribed the anomalous appearances during the forty 
days. Hence Mary at first did not know him ; hence 
the other form'^ in which he walked to Emmaus 
with the two unrecognizing disciples ; hence (possibly) 
his comparative illocality,'^ as the natural waned, 
and was less subject to the laws of motion ; and hence, 
perhaps, the cloud that enveloped him at his ascen- 
sion, it being the last dispersion and sublimation of 
all that was earthly ; and then he was no more to be 
seen, except as by Stephen and St. Paul, when the 
spiritual sense w^as opened to the transcendent realities 
of another sphere. The fact that he passed through 
closed doors needs no more explanation than the open- 
ing of the tomb, the walking upon the waves, or the 
opening of Peter's prison-gates by angel hands. 

We are no such masters of the Divine Psychology 



212 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. i 

that we shall pretend to give all the reasons why it 
was necessary that Christ should have resumed the 
natural body. Perhaps it was necessary that it should 
serve yet further as the basis and scaffolding of the 
glorified man. Perhaps it was not in accordance with 
essential Divine laws, that from such a soul as his 
the natural should be put off by a disorderly and vio- 
lent death. Perhaps it illustrates to us what death 
must ever be to a sinless nature ; what it will be to 
man if ever he becomes purged of all spiritual and 
moral evil. The actual death of Christ was not on 
the cross, but on the ascension mount ; that putting off 
mortality which typifies the transition of renovated 
humanity from the natural degree to the spiritual ; 
such a death as Adam would have had if he had never 
sinned ; not a violent rending away of the body, but 
its gradual extrusion, more slow or more rapid, accord- 
ing to the degree in which the heavens are englobed 
within us ; the spiritual waxing, the natural waning, 
till our last earthly integument breaks away from us, 
softly as a summer's cloud, which conceals from those 
that gaze after us the sunlit side where the eternities 
shed their " unfluctuating peace." So, at least, the 
Saviour put on immortality. We do not mean that 
the expiration on the cross was apparent and not real, 
or that the body laid in Joseph's tomb was not a veri- 
table corpse. We have no doubt it was. But it were 
not possible in the nature of things that it should so 
remain. 'Not with him could the natural so be put 
off, but rather in its divine and beautiful order. Long 
before his crucifixion his real death began ; for that 
v\'as the decrease of the natural before the incoming 



THE POST-EE?rr.EECTIOX BODT. 213 



fiillBess of the Divine I\Icin. The crucifixion clid not 
even intemipt the process, but it went on to its com- 
pletion, till on ascension mount the last of tlie earthlv 
broke aTvav. and the Glorined Form stood in the un- 
clouded eifulgence of God. Tlius. and not on Cal- 
vary, was that death of the Saviour which exemplifies 
the transition of redeemed and renovated man. 

Por another and more obvious reason^ it was neces- 
sary that the natural body should be resumed. It 
was to bring down the evidence of the resurrection to 
the lowest plane of human perceptions. Christ could 
not break upon his idisciples unveiled from his glori- 
fied state, fjr as yet their minds could not bear it. 
The natural served to them as a protecting dLisguise_, 
through which the annunciation might be made ; and 
even then their reason swayed and trembled beneath 
it. Men were immersed in sense, and therefore into 
the regions of sense the Divine Mercy let down the 
proofs of Christ triumphant over the grave, so that 
the Thomas of his own disciples and the Thomases 
of every age might not only see, but feel and handle 
and believe. 

It is very ibrtunate, however, that the real doctrine 
of Christ's resurrection depends on no uncertain hy- 
pothesis respecting the nattn^al li'^dy. "Whether the last 
of what is mortal was exclui.led c^n the cross and left 
for ever in the sepulchre : or whether it was excluded 
pr-gre--iv'' b' ^luring the forty days loll owing, which ^ve 
btlicve ; or 'vL-ciher it was excluded instantaneously in 
the act of ascension ; — it is broadly evident that it v:as 
excluded ; and the way is oj^en to us for a right appre- 
hension of the fundamental fact of Christianity, 



CHAPTEE XI. 



THE GKAND APOSTOLIC DOCTEINE. 

We are now prepared to understand what the Apos- 
tles mean by the resurrection of Christ, and why they 
put forward the fact as one on which the whole stress 
of the Gospel lies. They do not mean by it the reani- 
mation of the corpse in Joseph's tomb. That were a 
fact of quite too narrow significance to rear upon it the 
broad superstructure of the Christian economy. If 
that were all, then the revivification of the corpse of 
Jairus's daughter, of the widow's son at Nain, and 
of Lazarus at Bethany, belonged to precisely the same 
class of phenomena. If that were all, it would have 
been no such proof of a future life as would ever have 
wrought a radical change in human belief on that sub- 
ject. The revivification of Christ's crucified body may 
have had its place in the grand composite doctrine ; 
but the Apostles often lose sight of this circumstance 
altogether. They mean by the resurrection of Christ 

the EXCAEI^ATION OF THE SON OF MaN", AND HIS 
CONSEQUENT EMEEGENCE OUT OF NATUEAL CON- 
DITIONS TO HIS PLACE OF POWEE ON HIGH. If the 

reader will attend one moment to the proofs of this 
proposition, his reason shall be abundantly satisfied. 

1 . We have no evidence that Paul ever saw Christ 
in the flesh. We have presumptive evidence that 

214 



THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 215 



shuts off any such supposition, and renders it certain^ 
at least, that he never saw him during the time be- 
tween his crucifixion and ascension. He first saw him 
on the journey to Damascus, when the Lord broke 
upon him from amid the supersensual glories that 
smote him to the earth. Yet from this fact he comes 
forward as a personal witness of the Lord's resurrec- 
tion; for after enumerating the other witnesses, the 
eleven Apostles, and the five hundred, he says, " Last 
of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of 
due time.'^ What he means, and what he was a wit- 
ness to, was, not the Lord's resumption of flesh, but 
his putting it off, and the consequent power with 
which he swept the soul even of such a persecutor as 
himself. 

2. The new life and fervor with which they felt 
themselves endowed after the Pentecostal scene, they 
ascribe to the Lord's resurrection. It was the Com- 
forter descending in showers of grace, because the 
double process was now accomplished, — the flesh put 
off, and the glorified form left unclouded, whence came 
the pulsing splendors, that melted all souls beneath 
them. " This Jesus," so speaks the loosened tongue 
of Peter, "hath God raised up, whereof we are all 
witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of 
God exalted, and having received of the Father the 
promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth thiS; 
which ye now see and hear." Paul's language is to 
the same point : " But each one of us received the 
gift of grace which he possesses according to the meas- 
ure wherein it was given by Christ. Wherefore it is 
written. When he went up on high, he led captive the 



216 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



captives and gave gifts unto men. JS'ow that word, 
^ he went up/ what saith it but that he first went 
down into the lower parts of the earth? Yea, he 
who came down is the same as he who is gone up, far 
above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.'^* 
And to this coming down,'^ and "going up,'' — in 
other words, his incarnation and excarnation, — he 
goes on to ascribe all that effluent energy by which 
the Church was formed and edified, and from which 
" the whole body, being knit together and compacted 
by all its joints, derives its continual growth in the 
working of His bounty, which supplies its needs, 
according to the measure of each several part, that it 
may build itself up in love.'' 

Paul is so full of this thought, that, whenever he 
touches upon the theme, his language gurgles from 
his lips. The following is another of these utterances, 
where the images crowd fast upon each other to find 
way : " The eyes of your understanding being en- 
lightqned, that ye may know what is the hope of his 
calling, and what the riches of the glory of his in- 
heritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding 
greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, ac- 
cording to the working of his mighty power which 
he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from 

THE DEAD, AND SET HIM AT HIS OWN RIGHT HAND 

IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES, far abovc all princi- 
pality, and power, and might, and dominion, and 
every name that is named, not only in this world, 
but also in that which is to come ; and hath put all 
things under his feet, and gave him to be the head 

- Acts ii. 32, 33 ; Eph. iv. 7-11. 



THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTEINE. 217 

over all things to the Church, which is his body, the 
fullness of Him that filleth all in all." * 

It hence becomes clear enough why, and in what 
manner, the resurrection of Christ is made the ground 
of man's justification. It is because his resurrection 
is none other than his excarnation, or his emergence 
out of all natural conditions, whence he imparts, not 
a putative, but a subjective, righteousness to the be- 
liever. Faith, says the Apostle, is reckoned to us for 
righteousness, if we believe on Him who raised up 
Jesus our Lord from the dead ; who was delivered 
for our offences, and was raised again for ccjr 
JUSTIFICATION." And there is a parallel passage 
which is as full of meaning as it can hold : " Yea, 
doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency 
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord ; for whom 
I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them 
vile, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not 
having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, 
but that which is through the faith of Christ, the 
righteousness which is of God by faith ; that I may 
know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the 
fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable 
to his death, if by any means I might attain to the 
resurrection of the dead.^' The Apostle here describes 
the double process of outward humiliation and sub- 
jective glorification, transferred from Christ to his 
followers, though, of course, in lower and finite de- 
gree. By receiving his life, and following in his 
steps, the natural man is put off, as the heavenly man 
is put on ; so that when death cleaves aw^ay our 
* Eph. i. 18-23. 

19 



218 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

fleshly envelopments, the body celestial is full formed, 
and emerges free and glorious, and the disciple, in 
his humble measure, attains to his Master's resurrec- 
tion from the dead.* 

We are at a loss where to stop, as this grand Apos- 
tolic doctrine blazes forth from almost every page. 
Another passage crowds upon us, and as we think it 
has fared poorly in the hands of the commentators, 
both orthodox and heterodox, we will quote it entire. 
" In him dwelleth all the fullness of the 
Godhead bodily ; and ye are complete in him, 
which is the head of all principality and power ; in 
whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision 
made without hands, in putting olf the body of the 
sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ ; buried 
with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with 
him through the faith of the operation of God, who 
hath raised him from the dead.'' f The fullness of 
the Godhead bodily, is none other than the divine 
organism unfolding from the life within, and made 
complete in his glorification ; and this process was 
the "operation of God,'' whereby the flesh was ex- 
cluded, and the Divine Man came forth in his pleni- 
tude to pour life and strength through our wasted 
humanity, and put off the " body of our sins." 

And hence the forgiveness of sin, or the putting 
away of our iniquities, is predicated on Christ's resur- 
rection. Whenever his death is named as the ground 
of forgiveness, it is perfectly clear to our mind that 
this is only done as describing the reverse side of this 
grand composite doctrine. His death does not mean 

- Eomans iv. 24, 25 ; Phil. iii. 8-11. j Col. ii. 9-12. 



THE GRAXD APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 



219 



a certain arnouiit of penal agony at the moment of his 
crucifixion. It means the whole work of liis excar- 
nation. It means the waning of the natural^ albeit 
through blood and tears^ and the consequent coming 
on of that fidluess of the Godhead bodily," from 
which he operates the salvation of the world. One is 
the earth side and the other is the divine side of the 
same fact, — each essential to the other, and keeping 
chime with it ; and it is all the same tiling, whether 
you say salvation comes by his death or by his resur- 
rection, since it is by that double process Avhich placed 
him in the seat of mediatorial power. In his exhorta- 
tion to the people of Antioch, Paul testifies, first, that 
God raised Christ from the dead never to see corrup- 
tion, and then proceeds : Be it known unto you, 
therefore, that through this man is preached unto you 
the forgiveness of sins." And to the same purpose he 
tells the Corinthians : " If Christ be not raised, your 
faith is vain ; ye are yet in youi sins." The forgive- 
ness of iniquity, or the expunging of evil from the 
soul of man, was through that suffusion of Divine 
grace which came from the humanity of Christ, glori- 
fied and made transmissive of the eternal truth and 
love. In Acts iv. 31-23, we have the Pentecostal 
scene repeated, when the place was shaken by the 
rushing breezes of the Holy Spirit, which is described 
as evidence of '^the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.""* 
3. The coming of Christ to judgment is named as 
a necessary concomitant of his resurrection,— a com- 
ing which has no perceptible relation to the reanima- 
tion of his natural body, but which follows his excar- 
- Acts xiii. 30-33 ; 1 Cor. xv. 17 ; Acts iv. 33. 



220 THE EXCARXATION OF THE SOX OF MAX. 



nation and glorification as an effect flowing irresistibly 
from its cause. Thus Paul delivers his message to 
the Athenians : " God hath appointed a day in which 
he will judge the world in righteousness by that man 
w^hom he hath ordained^ whereof he hath given assur- 
ance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the 
dead ; that is^ his resurrection is a pledge and pre- 
lude of the judgment. Peter's testimony is to the 
same purpose : " Him God raised up the third day, 
and showed him openly.'^ And he commanded us 
to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he 
wdiich was ordained of God to be the judge of quick 
and dead." * 

4. These passages, which might be multiplied in- 
definitely, show us pretty clearly what was the Apos- 
tolic doctrine, and they let us far into the animus of 
the primitive Church, on w^hicli a power from the 
risen Christ lay like the brooding glories of the noon, 
and before his imparted righteousness was given .up 
for an imputed one, and paled away in Athanasian 
and Arian wrano;lino^s. But we turn back to the 
words of Christ himself, and they become doubly 
luminous as we read them in the light of history. 
He delineates just before his crucifixion wdiat Avas to 
be the centre-truth in his system of doctrines, from 
which all the rest were to trick their beams. Read 
the following passage in the light of our preceding 
expositions. 

^' It is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I 
go not aAvay, the Comforter wdll not come unto you ; 
but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And 
* Acts xvii. 31 ; x. 40, 42. 



THE GRA^ND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 



221 



when lie is come, he will reprove the world of sin, of 
righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, because 
they believe not on me. Of righteousness, because I 
go to my Father, and ye see me no more. Of judg- 
ment, because the prince of this world is judged. I 
have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear 
them now. Howbeit, when the Spirit of Truth is 
come, he will guide you into all truth : for he shall 
not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, 
that shall he speak, and he will show you things to 
come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of 
mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the 
Father hath are mine ; therefore said I that he shall 
take of mine and shall show it unto you. A little 
while and ye shall not see me, and again a little while 
and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father." * 

We hope the reader does not need to have it proved 
to. him that by going away" and ^'coming again 
the Saviour does not mean a journey into natural 
space and back ; that by ascending to the Father in 
order that he might descend again from the Father, 
he does not intend vertical motion up and down. He 
means ascent through the degrees of life from the 
natural plane up to the Divine, and his consequent 
descent again in the effluent energies of the eternal 
love. He means his excarnation, or the decrease and 
disappearance of the natural, so that "for a little 
while they should not see him." And, as the result 
of this, his glorification, or such a union with God 
that his exalted humanity should so embody the 
Divine life, and image down the Divine splendors, 
^ John xvi. 7-16. 

19* 



222 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



that he should stand in the midst of the seven srolden 
candlesticks, as the source whence their lights slioukl 
be ever burning ; and thus after a little while they 
should see him, because he went to the Father. In 
this wise, all things that the Father hath are his, and 
he shows them unto men. Such was the primitive 
and all-renewing doctrine of the Mediator, and such 
its close and organic relation to the doctrine of our 
Lord's resurrection. 

5. There was only one article of faith among the 
first converts to Christianity. Believing on the 
Lord Jesus Christ," constituted their whole creed. 
But when they descend to the particulars which com- 
pose this comprehensive theology, and state what they 
consider its vitalizing element, w^e generally find it to 
be the Lord's resurrection. That one truth being 
admitted, all others followed in their place and order: 
^'If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, 
and believe in thine heart that God raised him from 
the dead, thou shalt be saved."* Obviously enough, 
the reanimation of the Lord's natural body is not even 
thought of here; and, as a mere historical fact, could 
have no such saving potency. Believing in the heart 
that God raised Christ from the dead, was to have the 
heart melted down under the baptizing fires which 
fell from the exalted Saviour, and which were the 
necessary consequence of his excarnation and emer- 
gence to the place of mediatorial power. Believing 
in the heart the Lord's resurrection, was being made 
conscious of that august truth, when the Holy Ghost 
fell on them at the name of Jesus. 

* Romans x. 9. 



CHAPTER XII. 



CONCLUSION. 

We will now proceed to sum up the results which 
we become fairly possessed of from the preceding in- 
vestigation. They have a direct and auspicious bear- 
ing on the great subject which we have in hand. 

1. Immortality under the new dispensation is not 
merely announced, but " brought to light.^' It is not 
merely taught, but exhibited to the eye. We have 
sometimes been told that the resurrection of Christ, 
understood merely as the resumption of his crucified 
body, proves a future life, and that this was its prin- 
cipal object. We have a right to infer (this is the 
argument) that a man may live again after death, 
since God may interpose and raise him up. He did 
so in the case of Christ, which shows that he may do 
so in the case of all his followers, though not on the 
third day, yet at the end of time, since with him one 
day is as a thousand years.'^ But how much deeper 
and broader is the significance of this great fact ! Im- 
mortality is not made presumptive, as a conclusion 
hanging on the last link of a syllogism, but its giant 
glories are disclosed. These men stood up and looked 
upon them, not undazzled by the disclosure. Their 
inner sight w^as touched and opened, and they saw the 
risen Christ, not on the natural side only, but the 

223 



224 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

spiritual side also, and they walked in hallowed light 
and breathed in hallowed air. True, the same thing 
had been vouchsafed at times from the beginning of 
the world, and under all dispensations. But never, 
till the excarnation of Christ had prepared the way, 
was a supersensual world revealed in such clear shin- 
ing to the inward perceptions of men. He was more 
present with his infant Church after his death and 
ascension than before, and they were " witnesses," not 
merely of the resuscitation of a dead body, but of 
eternal things unveiled. And the vision closed, and 
the glories waned, because too much for mortals, in 
their normal • condition, to bear ; and they turned 
from them only as Herschel tells us he took his eye 
from the telescope, when Sirius came on like the 
dawn of the morning, and he was obliged to turn 
away from the beautiful sight. 

2. The bat-like fallacies of our godless metaphysics 
vanish before the unfolding of our present theme. 
Everything above the plane of material existence, 
we have been taught to believe, is phantasmic and 
shadowy, and man at death ceases to be man and be- 
comes a " monad,'' or at best only a ghost. How was 
it with the great Exemplar of immortalized human 
nature ? He took his three favorite disciples behind 
the walls of sense, and caught them up a moment 
within the sphere where he lived with the prophets 
of old ; and they said. Let us pitch our tents and 
dwell here. Was that shadowy ? After the natural 
body had been excluded, he broke upon Saul in a 
light out of the heavenly state, and smote hira blind 
to the earth beneath the blaze. Was that shadowy ? 



COXCLUSIOX. 



225 



The propliet of Patmas, by iotroversiou among the 
eternal verities^ crossed the line which separates the 
objective scenery of matter and spirit, and saw "Him 
that was dead and is alive again/^ and fell as beneath 
the stroke of sunbeams. Was that shadowy? All 
the revealings of Christ's resurrection, before and 
after, show that the inward man is the real one, 
while the outward is the symbol ; that is the sub- 
stance, while this is the shadow. 

3. The analogy between the resurrection of Christ 
and that of his people is exact and complete. AVith 
him there was no "intermediate state" of disembodied 
and ghostly existence, but a continuoi^s putting ofP 
the natural body and putting on the Divine, and each 
was coincident with the other. This, and not the 
reanimation of the corpse in the tomb, was the resur- 
rection of the Lord Jesus, which is made the great 
fact of the Gospel ; corresponding precisely with that 
excarnation of man which abolishes his relations to 
material things, and makes him eternally the denizen 
of a spiritual word. Buried in the likeness of his 
death, we rise in the likeness of his emergence, 
out of it, and breathe our farewells over the grave. 
Death is not the mere expiration of the last breath, 
but the waning and final extinction of the natural 
functions ; sometimes sudden and violent, but al- 
ways progressive if orderly ; and resurrection is the 
ascension out of them of the substantial and immortal 
man. So it was with the Divine Exemplar, and his 
is the splendid type of what all resurrection is. 

4. The analogy between the sufferings of Christ 
and those of his followers is inexpressibly animating 



226 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

to the true believer. His glorificatioo is the image 
and representation of the regeneration of the disciple. 
In the disciple, too, there is the same double process, 
- — the putting off the natural and the putting on the 
spiritual. On the earth-side there is the agony and 
the trial through many a vale of humiliation ; on the 
other side, the angel-form unfolding from within, and 
preparing to take the place of the natural ; so that by 
the time the material organism has reached its period, 
the body celestial emerges into its own clime beyond 
the concealing clouds of this lower world. Not a 
self-denial nor a pang is rightly endured which is not 
wrought into our life plan, so as to help on the de- 
cease of the natural and the corresponding resurrec- 
tion of the spiritual in the image of the risen Lord.* 

* " Ye faithful souls who Jesus know, 
If risen indeed with him ye are, 
Superior to the joys below, 
His Resurrection's power declare. 

" Your faith by holy tempers prove ; 
By actions show your sins forgiven ; 
And seek the glorious things above. 

And follow Christ, your Head, to heaven. 

" To him continually aspire, 

Contending for your native place. 
And emulate the angel-choir. 
And only live to love and praise. 

" Your real life with Christ concealed. 
Deep in the Father's bosom lies ; 
And glorious as your Head revealed. 
Ye soon shall meet him in the skies." 

Watts. 



PART III. 



THE PxNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



" Great and learned men affirm angels to consist of a double 
substance; that is, of a spirit incorporeal, whereby they never 
cease from the contemplation of God, and a body whereby they 
are sometimes visible to men." — John of Thessalonica. 

" Our soul, which in its own nature is incorporeal and invisible, 
in whatever corporeal place it existeth, doth always stand in need 
of a body, suitable to the nature of that place respectively : which 
body it sometimes beareth, having put off that which before was 
necessary, but is now superfluous for the following state; and 
sometimes, again, putting on something to what before it had, 
now standing in need of some better clothing, to fit it for those 
more pure, ethereal, and heavenly places." — Origen. 
228 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

The Xew Testament comprehends three classes of 
writings, each clearly distinguishable from both the 
others. We have first the Evangelic narratives, in 
which the life of Christ on earth is embodiedj from 
the manger in Bethlehem to Ascension Mount. In 
these is exhibited the Divine Word, incarnate, living, 
speaking, shining in the midst of earthly darkness, 
and again becoming excarnate, and ascending to a 
reunion with God. This was heaven opening down 
to man, its truths descending and touching the earth. 
Then, secondly, we have the first development of these 
truths into history, their first influence on men's 
minds, and their first practical workings in the forma- 
tion of new communions called churches. We have 
this in the description of the first preaching of the 
Apostles, and in their letters to the churches which 
sprang up under their ministrations. These letters 
and history contain no addition to the truths orig- 
inally revealed, but they are the first practical com- 
mentary upon them, and important to their full com- 
prehension. Thirdly, we have the strictly prophetic 
portion, which describes prospectively the consumma- 
tion of Christianity in its final results upon humanity, 
for such we regard the Apocalypse. The revelation, 

20 229 



230 



THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



the commentary, and the prophetic view of the ulti- 
mate issues. 

It is our purpose now to examine the second of 
this class of writings, so far forth as they bear upon 
our subject. Though they contain not the original 
revelation, they show how its first preachers under- 
stood it, and how its first converts received it. They 
may not have received it at once in all its fullness and 
symmetry. It would be very strange if they had 
done so. It Avould be very strange if a system of 
infinite truth, which is to unfold through the ages, 
yea, through the eternities, should have obtained a 
complete lodgment at once in the minds of its first 
disciples. Our object will be to reproduce the revela- 
tion precisely as it lay in the minds of these A])Ostolic 
men and their earliest converts. We shall endeavor 
to avoid the error of trying to accommodate their 
opinions to modern doctrines, or to what we think the 
truth ought to be, — a method of interpretation which 
has twisted St. Paul's language and philosophy into 
all grotesque and fantastic shapes. 

We have an account of the life of St. Paul as given 
us by Luke and by himself, and we have thirteen 
letters written by him, either to the churches or to 
individuals. These writings have fared poorly in the 
hands of the sects, and they are so jumbled together 
in our English version, without reference to dates and 
incidents, that it is hardly possible in this form to get 
at the system of doctrine which they contain. But in 
the late work of Conybeare and Howson, we have all 
that can be desired in a commentary upon St. Paul. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



231 



Over the gulf of eighteen hundred years he is 
brought near to us amid all his surroundings, not as 
a dry dialectician, but as a great man, greatly and 
supernaturally endowed, whose deeds and words did 
more to change the aspect of the world, than those 
of any other man since the ascension of the Lord 
Jesus. His writings contain a system of Pneuma- 
tology, whose outlines we think cannot be mistaken. 
This bears with special significance upon our main 
topic, and we shall aim, therefore, to bring forth the 
outlines in as bright relief as possible. 



CHAPTEH II. 



THE DOCTEIXE OF THE PEIMITIYE CHURCH. 

The words heaven and hell, as they are used in 
popular speech^ describe the comj)lete ultimations of 
good and eviL The essential idea of heaven, as it 
falls into the common mind, is a condition of sinless 
purity and peace. Xo evil can be admitted there. 
Its last remnant must have been purged away from 
us before we can enter the blest abodes, else we should 
brino^ in a disturbino- element amons; its harmonies. 

" There from the past no gloom is shed 
Upon the present hour." 

Hell, on the other hand, is the abode of evil, and only 
evil. Nothing good can enter there. It is the state 
of souls in which all good has been perverted or 
destroyed. This we suppose to be the generally 
received doctrine of heaven and hell, — opposite states 
of unmingled good or unmingled evil, and not like 
the present state, in which good and evil are inter-' 
woven together. 

We have no fault to find with this "view, thougli 
perhaps we might state our conception in a somewhat 
different form. There are degrees- of goodness, nat- 
ural, spiritual, and Divine. There are degrees of 
evil, from the mildest to th^e most malignant ; but the 

232 



DOCTRINE OF THE rP.TMITIYE CHURCH. 233 



popular philosophy, which makes good and evil essen- 
tial opposites, and heaven and hell the state of each 
in their entire separation and antagonism, we have 
no disposition to controvert, for vve think it so far 
mainly true. 

Closely connected with this same view of heaven 
and hell, we find a prevailing opinion that every in- 
dividual at death goes immediately to the one or the 
other. You have no standing-place between the two, 
after you lose your foothold upon the earth. You 
rise immediately to the heavenly j)eaks of light, or 
else you sink into the pit of despair. This we sup- 
pose to be the prevailing belief of Protestant com- 
munities, and it furnishes the ground of popular 
appeal from Protestant pulpits. 

It would seem to follow, if people were accustomed 
to put two ideas together, that every one while on 
the earth must become entirely good or entirely bad. 
Death is not a moral change, but a physical one. It 
is also momentary. If, therefore, just beyond that 
point, all persons are fit only for an abode of perfect 
purity or of unmingled evil, they must be found, when 
just on the hither side, saints entirely regenerated, or 
else consummate fiends. But people holding the faith 
above described, especially on their death-beds, are 
most sincere in disclaiming entire regeneration. They 
confess the remnants of evil that are in them, and ex- 
pect only to be saved by an imputed righteousness, 
while their souls are yet foul with sin. But will you 
not take your souls along with you into heaven? and 
if so, will there not be a great deal of foulness there, 
the imputed righteousness notw ithstanding ? 
20 - 



234 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



In tlieologieal matters^ however^ people generally 
practice very little constructiveness ; and if they put 
two ideas together^ they do not mind whether they 
make a joint or not^ so as to give theology a chance 
to rise and walk. They seem to imagine that God 
takes care of the poor cripple by successive miracles, 
with such crutches as the school Doctors are able to 
supply, and that a symmetrical form, which is the 
natural development of part from part, is not to be 
expected ; and so the opinions we have sketched 
above, incongruous as they are, prevail extensively in 
Protestant communities to the present day. 

If the reader has not been accustomed to look much 
into ecclesiastical history, he may be surprised when 
we say, that this doctrine of instantaneous salvation 
or damnation at death is entirely modern ; that it is 
one of the extremes of Protestantism; that it is the 
offspring of the Lutheran Reformation ; that it was 
invented as an accompaniment of Luther's doctrine 
of justification by faith alone; that it is utterly repu- 
diated by nine tenths of the Christian Church now, 
and that it was never heard of in those primitive 
churches which were founded by the Apostles them- 
selves. The history of opinions on this subject is 
full of interest and instruction, and we will give it in 
as clear and succinct a summary as we can. 

Let the reader, then, go back with us to the Apos- 
tolic churches, at the point of time when they first 
emerge fully into the light of history. The Apostolic 
labors closed with the first century. By the year 100 
all the Apostles had done their work and gone to tlieir 



DOCTEIXE OF THE PEmiTIVE CHUECH. 235 



rest, Vv'ith the exce23tiun perhaps, of John, who may 
have lived a little while after that elate. 

T\'e come, then, to the writings of the Christian 
Fathers, extendino^ downward and reflectino; with 
more or less fullness the opinions of their times. 
T\liat were those opinions, say from the year 100 on- 
ward, touching the state of man after death? On 
many points of fiith their doctrines were in conflict, 
and sharp controversies belong to the history of this 
period. On one subject, however, they are all agreed ; 
namely, that there are three conditions after death, 
heaven and hell, and a state mediate between thera called 
Hades. In all controversies the disputants stand 
alike on this, as a common substratum of belief, which 
had never been disturbed or called in question. Into 
this mediate state all men passed alike at death, and 
there av;aited the issues of the final judgment. There 
all the patriarchs and prophets were. Thither all the 
nations, Jewish and heathen, had alike gone. They 
were not all in the same condition in respect to hap- 
j)iness or suffering, but they awaited there the ulti- 
mate bliss or th^ ultimate woe."^ 

■^^ '"The Belief of the First Tliree Centuries concerning Christ's 
^Mission to the Underworld, by Frederick Huidekoper," is the title 
of a small volume designed by the author as an argument for the 
genuineness of the Gospel narratives, but which we regard as an 
exceedingly valuable contribution to ecclesiastical history. The 
writer makes the following statement, fortified by copious quota- 
tions from the Fathers : " It can scarcely be that at the opening 
of the second century, or the close of the first, the doctrine of 
Christ's Underworld Mission, so far, at least, as regards the preach- 
ing to, and liberation of, the departed, was not a widely spread 
and deeply seated opinion among Christians, The evidence of its 
g&neral reception is far stronger than if it vrere a mere doctrine of 



236 THE P^sEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



Hence the teachings of these early Fathers respect- 
ing the work of redemption were in close congruity 
with their opinions respecting the mediate place of 
sonls. Christ came down to the earth, and the Word 
became incarnate, not only for the sake of the genera- 
tions that were to come, but for the sake of the gene- 
rations gone. He went into Hades, and there broke 
up the reign of moral evil, and opened the way for 
men to ascend out of it into heaven. They describe 
it as a fierce conflict with Satan, Christ despoiling him 
of his power over God's people in Hades, and hence 
of his power over the minds of men on the earth. 
Whether they really regarded this conflict as strictly 
personal, — whether their language, and especially 
Origen's, was meant to be taken as baldly literal, — 
we very much doubt. But such is their conception, 
and such the language in which they clothe it.'^ 

It hence became one of the controversies of the 
early Church, whether just men, who had gone into 
Hades from the Gentile world, might not be saved. 
" What !" exclaimed Clement of Alexandria, ^' do not 
the Scriptures manifest that the Lord preached the 
Gospel to those who perished in the deluge; or 
rather to such as had been bound, and to those in 
prison and custody ? It has been shown by me that 

the creed ; for articles of the creed have in nearly every instance 
been opinions which were NOT generally received, and to which 
the stronger party, therefore, gave a place in their confessions of 
faith as a means of defining their position. On the essential fea- 
tures of the present doctrine, the catholics and heretics were of 
one mind. It was a point too settled to admit dispute." — p. 138. 

" Neander, Church History, pp. 640-642, Torrey's translation. 
Huidekoper, pp. 69-81. 



DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 237 

the Apostles, in imitation of the Lord, preached the 
Gospel to those in Hades. • For there also, as here, I 
think it behooved the best of the disciples to be imi- 
tators of their teacher, that the one should lead to 
conversion of the Hebrews, and the others the Gen- 
tiles ; that is, such of both as had lived according to 
the justice of the law or of philosophy, not perfectly, 
indeed, but imperfectly.'^ Clement is follow^ed by 
Origen and by some others in his liberal and merciful 
doctrine, though their opponents contended stoutly, 
yet not very consistently, that not Gentiles, but only 
Jews and Christians, could be raised up out of Hades 
into heaven. The liberal party very naturally asked 
the question, If Christ is offered to the inhabitants of 
Hades, why may not the just men among the Gentiles 
receive him there, as well as here ? 

The Roman Catholic Church inherited from the 
primitive Church this doctrine of a mediate state of 
the dead, as the gathering-place of souls. Out of it 
she shaped the doctrine of Purgatory, which turns 
Hades into a place of penal fires for such offences as 
may be venial, and places the key of it in the hands 
of the priesthood. She knew too well with what 
potency to wield this doctrine, and how to turn it 
into a source of revenue. Hence her prayers for the 
dead, and hence the millions that have flowed into 
her coffers for her intercessory offices for the souls in 
purgatory. This was one of the abuses which the 
Reformers vehemently assailed. They very naturally 
assaulted the doctrine which they regarded as the 
ground and support of these corruptions, and rejected 
the whole notion of purgatory as a tradition of Rome. 



238 THE PNEmiATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



They did not fall back upon the primitive belief, but 
tore down the whole structure, corruptions and all, 
and between the vast extremes of heaven and hell 
they left no foothold or resting-place, but an eternal 
void ; so that the soul, as soon as she leaves the earth, 
must take her flight to the one or drop incontinently 
into the other. On the brittle thread of life she hangs 
poised between the two, and her eye measures the ter- 
rific and empty gulf between. Let the thread snap, 
and we tread on nothing, and there is a flight upward 
fearfully steep and difficult, or an awful plunge down- 
ward with nothing to break the fall. As the "New 
Eno^land Primer" taug^ht us, — 

There is a dreadful, fiery hell, 
Where wicked ones must always dwell ; 
There is a heaven full of joy. 
Where godly ones must always stay ; 
To one of these my soul must fly, 
As in a moment, when I die." 

Hence the sects which inherit these opinions, and 
occupy the extremes of Protestantism, find some 
pretty hard problems to be solved. What shall be 
done with the virtuous heathen ? What with infants 
and young children ? What with the multitudes of 
Christian professors, never half regenerated, and per- 
haps not half converted ? They generally assign the 
heathen nations in one body to perdition, albeit those 
nations include multitudes who have lived up to their 
light more nearly, perhaps, than the Christian churches 
have ever done. Infants have sometimes been assigned 
to one place, and sometimes to the other. But chil- 
dren that have somewhat developed, and in wdiom, 



DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 239 

therefore, evil has begun to appear, for it does uni- 
versally, — where is their place when they die? A 
fearful question, as you will read in the faces of dis- 
tressed parents, when they weep over the small coffins, 
or as you will perceive in the cautious wording of the 
funeral prayer, which fears to compromise an essential 
doctrine, — a question to which our eviscerated Protest- 
antism is incapable of returning a consistent answer. 
Nearly half the race die between the ages of three and 
fourteen. They have never understood the nature 
and conditions of salvation, or attained to full moral 
responsibility ; and if they sink immediately to eternal 
perdition, what will you say of the Divine justice? 
If, on the other hand, they ascend to heaven, " as in 
a moment when they die," alas for the influx of 
selfishness and stubbornness which heaven must be 
always receiving ! We take it that, in the masses of 
children, moral evil has become considerably rampant 
at seven years of age, while the work of regeneration 
has not even begun. 

It is only our ultra Protestantism that involves it- 
self in these difficulties and absurdities. The Eng- 
lish Episcopal Church rejected the mediaeval doctrine 
of a purgatory, but she did not throw away the idea 
of a mediate place of souls. Pier liturgy still recites 
the old clause, Christ descended into Hades, and she 
still holds it in her creed as the state of the dead, thus 
bridging the gulf between earth and heaven, or be- 
tween earth and hell. The Greek Church also re- 
tains it, and the doctrine of immediate salvation or 
damnation at death by an ictus Dei,'' is not likely 
to have any place in the creed of the Christian world, 



240 



THE PIs^EUxMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



except among those smaller sects whose fierce resili- 
ence from Catholicism isolates them from the common 
reason, and from ideas which have had their develop- 
ment through all the Christian ages. 

Thus, then, the matter stands historically. In the 
last quarter of the second century, when the Chris- 
tian churches emerge clearly into the light, we find 
them universally in possession of the idea of a me- 
diate place of souls, — one which was neither heaven 
nor hell, but preliminary to either. It was not an 
idea broached by heretics here and there. It was the 
belief of the Church Universal, which nobody called 
in question. Out of this belief the papacy shaped 
its purgatory, and practiced on human credulity and 
fear. In Dante's Divina Comoeclia it expands into 
terrible sublimity, as the terraced hill that leads up 
from the concentric circles of hell toward the starry 
spheres. Protestantism made its assault on the pur- 
gatory of Eome, and in tearing it away tore away the 
primitive doctrine along with it, leaving to itself only 
two conditions after death, and looking into the im- 
mense vacuum between with blank amaze; necessi- 
tating the hideous logic that damns childhood and all 
heathendom, and which would damn all Christendom 
too, were it not that some may be saved by Christ's 
supererogatory and accredited righteousness. 

How came the early churches by the doctrine of a 
mediate place of souls ? How happens it, that, when 
we first get a clear historic view of them, separated 
only a few years from the Apostles themselves, this 
belief among them was unquestioned and universal ? 
From whom did they inherit it? We have no faith 



DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 241 



in church authority, nor do we think it necessary to 
adopt an opinion because the Christian Fathers be- 
lieved it. But how came they to believe it, and that 
unanimously? It will be seen that this question is 
one of exceeding interest and importance. 
21 Q 



CHAPTEK III. 



THE HEBREW DOGTRIJS'E OF HADES. 

Before we come to this question^ however^ we ask 
the company of the reader while we go back yet far- 
ther, and, stepping across the Apostolic age, inquire 
what was the ante-Christian doctrine respecting the 
condition of the dead? What was the state of opin- 
ion among the Jews at the advent of Christ ? Chris- 
tianity came out from the bosom of Judaism, some- 
what as Spring breaks forth from the bosom of Win- 
ter, making the germs that had slept in death burst 
out in refulo^ent screen. For Judaism furnished to 
Christianity the moulds of its thonght, and the im- 
agery under which its distinctive truths were bodied 
forth. 

The Hebrews in the earlier stages of their history 
had no very definite ideas respecting the state of the 
dead. They believed in human immortality, and 
that Hades was the common receptacle of all departed 
souls. But of man's condition in Hades they con^ 
ceived nothing more than that it was one of compara- 
tive weakness and shadowy repose. It was the region 
of the phantom nations, into which all passed alike at 
death. Kings reigned there, but on dusky and un- 
substantial thrones. The language which the prophet 
puts into the mouth of Israel in exultation over the 

242 



THE HEBREW DOCTRINE OF HADES. 243 

fall of Babylon^ her former oppressor, describes prob- 
ably the state of belief among the Hebrews at that 
time. Hades from beneath is moved for thee to 
meet thee at thy coming : it stirreth up the dead for 
thee, even all the chief ones of the earth ; it hath 
raised up from their thrones all the kings of the 
nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art 
thou also become weak as we? art thou become like 
unto us Heaven was the abode of God and of his 
angels above the sky. The more modern and Chris- 
tian idea, that it was ever to be the place of human 
souls, seems not at this time to have been entertained 
by the Hebrew. Heaven above as the abode of 
superhuman intelligences, and Hades the shadowy 
realm beneath into which all the dead had departed, 
seems to comprise the whole of the early Hebrew 
pneumatology. 

In process of time, however, and under the teach- 
ings of the later Rabbins, the idea of Hades became 
developed into something far more distinct and tan- 
gible. They divided it into separate regions or com- 
partments. AYe distinguish at least three. The upper 
region was a place of comparative rest and happiness, 
where the good of all ages were gathered together. 
There were the patriarchs and prophets, and all the 
people of God. This region the Pharisees called the 
Lower Paradise, and there the descendants of Abra- 
ham dwelt till the final judgment. Lower down than 
this were the wicked, and probably all the heathen 
nations, in comparative discomfort and darkness, 
though not suffering the final punishment. Lower 
down still was the region of Gehenna, with its baleful 



244 



THE PNEU.MATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



fires^ not vet occupied^ but ready to receive the wicked 
after the final judgment. This region of Hades, and 
this alone, was a place of punishment answering to 
the modern idea of hell. 

The Pharisee believed that all the dead would be 
raised ont of Hades at the final judgment, that there 
would be "a resurrection both of the just and of the 
nnjust.'^ And the reader will here distinguish care- 
fully between two things, — between the resurrection 
and the re-incarnation of the dead. Though the 
Pharisee believed that all the dead would be raised 
ont of Hades to judgment, only a part of them would 
be re-incarnated, or enter again into their former 
bodies. These were the people of God, or the de- 
scendauts of Abraham. Their souls would be raised 
out of the Paradise below, be clothed again with flesh, 
and after that occupy an upper or terrestrial Paradise, 
where they would ever live with the Messiah and 
nevermore go back into Hades. Xot so of the 
wicked. They would be raised up to judgment, but 
not be re-incarnated. They would be sent back into 
Plades, not into their former region, but into Gehenna, 
the lowest of all, where they would suffer eternal 
punishment. So that, after the final judgment, Hades 
will have been emptied of all its people, the righteous 
to live in their former bodies in a terrestrial Paradise, 
the unrighteous to go back into the lowest region of 
Hades, called Gehenna or hell. 

There was still another sect among the Jews, who 
believed in human immortality, and who seem to 
have been a much better people than the Pharisees. 
* Acts xsiv. 15. 



THE HEBEE^V DOCTRIXE OF HADES. 245 



These were the Essenes ; men of singular purity in 
life and manners. Their belief differed from that of 
the Pharisees^ at least on one essential point. They 
believed all souls were immortal^ and passed on to 
judgment; but" they rejected totally and heartily the 
dogma respecting re-incarnation. On this point Jo- 
sephus is clear and positive, but he is not so explicit 
as to the other doctrines of their faith. We infer, 
however, from his too general statement, that they 
believed in Hades as a mediate region of souls, and 
in a universal resurrection of the dead out of it, both 
good and bad ; none of them, hovrever, to enter into 
their former bodies, but the good to rise into heaven 
above all corruption, and the bad to sink back again, 
and be adjudged to Gehenna, the lowest region of 
Hades. They were strong anti-materialists, and 
rejected the notion of a reunion of the soul with flesh, 
with peculiar aversion. 

We gather up the fol]o"\^'ing principles, therefore, 
as constituting the Jewish pneumatology at the time 
of Christ's appearing. 

1. The vague and dreamy notions of the early 
Hebrews had become developed into forms of doctrine 
exceedingly distinct and tangible. Among those who 
believed in a future life, however, there was a diversity 
of opinion, the Pharisees sinking into materialism, 
the Essenes risino^ clear above it. 

2. The Pharisee discriminated the old general idea 
of Hades, shaping it into a threefold region ; one 
place for the children of Abraham, one for heathen 
and wicked men, and one lower down still, which, 

21 * 



246 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



however, was uninhabited, and was to continue so 
until after the final judgment. 

3. Then — at the judgment — all mankind would 
arise from Hades; the children of Abraham to receive 
their former bodies^ and live with the Messiah in a 
Paradise on the earth ; all other peoples, without 
being re-incarnated, to sink into Gehenna, which now 
for the first time becomes the receptacle of souls and 
the place of endless retribution. 

4. The Essenes rejected totally the dogma of the 
Rabbins about re-iucarnation, and believed that good 
souls rise of their own tendency to a region of purity 
and bliss when freed from matter, and that wicked 
souls, because of their corruption, gravitate downward, 
and sink into Gehenna.* 

AYe are now in full possession of the prevailing 
ideas respecting tlie state of the dead, among Jews 
just before the Apostolic age, and among Christians 
just after. It will be perceived that the points of 
resemblance are many and striking ; that the same 
terms are used, and that the same philosophy of the 
future life underlies the belief both of the later Jew 
and the early Christian, though the work of Christ 
as a Redeemer, and as opening the way for man's 
ascent out of the mediate state of the dead, comes in 
and forms an essential part in the scheme of early 
Christian doctrine. 

* Josephus, Antiquities, Book XYIII. Chap. T. 3 ; Wars of the 
Jews, Book II. Chap. VIII. 11, 14 ; Eobinson's Cahnet, under the 
word Hell; Greek and English Lexicon, under "A«%c; Campbell, 
Dissertation VI. Part II. " AlStjq and Vkevva. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE SCEIPTUEE DOCTEIXE. 

The important question now occurs^ What do the 
Sacred Scriptures teach on this subject of a mediate 
state ? Is it a doctrine of revelation, or is it not ? 
We premise, that the Bible distinctly eecog- 

NIZES A THEEEFOLD CONDITION OP THE DEAD, 
HEAVEN AND HELL, AND A STATE MEDIATE BE- 
TWEEN THE TWO. We will draw out the evidence, 
and we trust the fact will be broadly manifest. 

1. The Xew Testament employs the same terms 
that were in use among the Jews, Heaven and Hell 
and Hades, We do not mean to say that the VvTiters 
use these words in precisely the same sense that the 
Jews did, for they came to have a fullness of mean- 
ing under the Gospel which the Jew as such could 
not fathom or receive. Of this afterwa^rd. What we 
say is, tliat they use the same words, with the same 
range of meaning, and with the same analogous dis- 
criminations. 

The word ^^helP^ occurs twenty times in our Eng- 
lish version of the New Testament, and with one ex- 
ception it is rendered indiscriminately from the two 
words Gehenna and Hades. And yet, as Dr. Camp- 
bell has shown conclusively in his admirable and lu- 

247 



248 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OP ST. PAUL. 



minoiis essay, those two words have not the same 
meaning, and only the former answers to the modern 
and Christian idea of hell. The word Hades, occur- 
ring ten times in the New Testament, never answers 
to that idea, and never ought to have been so rendered. 
In almost all the versions of the Scriptures except 
ours, the distinction between these two words is care- 
fully preserved. Why it was not so preserved in ours, 
is obvious enough. Luther, in his German transla- 
tion, uniformly confounded them, because he would 
recognize none but the extreme Protestant doctrine 
of only two states after death. Hades, therefore, 
which describes the third or mediate state, he has 
confounded with Gehenna, and the English trans- 
lators have followed in hi§ track. 

That " Hades" never means hell in the modern sense, 
but the state of the dead without reference to their ulti- 
mate bliss or ultimate woe, will be abundantly evident 
from the connection wherever the word occurs. 

We proceed to cite a few instances, where the con- 
text clearly establishes the fact that it describes the 
mediate place of souls. 

Acts ii. 27 : Thou wilt not leave my soul in 
Hades, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see 
corruption.'' These words are quoted from Psalm 
xvi. 10, where they have apparent primary reference 
to David. Peter argues that they have reference to 
Christ, and not to David ; and he does this from the 
fact that David was buried and his flesh saw corrup- 
tion, whereas Christ rose in the flesh on the third day 
and saw no corruption. In both instances — in the 
primary reference to David and in the secondary 



THE SCRIPTUEE DOCTRIXE. 249 

reference to Christ — there is no mistaking the import 
of the word Hades. It means the receptacle of 
souls, whether good or bad, immediately after their 
exit from the body. To suppose that David de- 
scended at death into the place of punishment among 
the damned, to the Hebrew mind would be little less 
than blasphemy ; to suppose that Christ did, would to 
the Christian mind be something worse. 

Revelation xx. 13, 14. In this passage we have a 
distinct recognition of the doctrine that Hades is a 
state of the dead, diifering from that of hell, and, on 
the part of the internally corrupt and profane, pre- 
liminary to it; that, in the final judgment. Hades 
will deliver up all that are in it in order that their 
most interior quality may be discerned ; that this be- 
ing adjudged corrupt, they will be cast into Gehenna 
or the lake of fire, after which Hades will be abol- 
ished or merged in Gehenna ; there being no need of 
any mediate or preliminary condition after all who 
were in it have passed on to their state of consumma- 
tion. '^And death and Hades delivered up the dead 
which were in them, and they were judgedt every man 
according to his works. And death and Hades w^ere 
cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." 
Our translators, by rendering Hades in this passage 
by the word " hell,'^ make the inspired writer assert 
the gross absurdity that hell will be cast into itself. 

1 Corinthians xv. 55 : " O death, where is thy sting? 
O grave (Hades), where is thy ^dctory?" This is the 
only instance where the translators of our version have 
departed from their rule. They here render Hades, 
not " hell,'' but " grave." The reason is obvious. If 



250 



TFIE PXEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



they rendered, " O hell, where is thy victory ?" they 
saw at once they were driving into blank iiniversalism. 
It is plain enough that the word here does not mean 
'^hell/' and it is just as plain that it does not mean 
grave.'' Neither in Scripture nor in classic usage 
does the word ever denote the mere place of sepulture 
for dead bodies. 

Luke xvi. 19-31. The parable of the rich man 
and Lazarus. Verse 23 : ^'And in hell (Hades) he 
lifted up his eyes, being in torments.'' It may not be 
so clear, at first sight, that the word in this connection 
means tlie mediate state of souls. And yet, on a full 
investigation, the fact is abundantly evident. Hades 
is here discriminated according to the conceptions of 
the later Jews; the children of God enjoying the 
blissful society of each other, the children of evil 
suffering a grievous though partial retribution. They 
are not sundered by the vast distance between heaven 
and hell, but they are in regions so nearly conter- 
minous that they hold converse together, v It is clear 
that a condition is here described preliminary to the 
divisions of the final judgment. 

Still more conclusive in fixing the meaning of the 
word Hades " is the almost uniform usage of the 
Greek Seventy in their translation of the Hebrew 
Scriptures. We have already seen that the Hebrew, 
from tlie earliest times, had some indeterminate idea 
of the future life. The general state of the dead is 
denoted in the Old Testament by tlie Hebrew word 
"Sheol." Our translators have sometimes rendered 
it ^^hell," sometimes grave;" but, as those words 



THE SCRIPTUEE DOCTEINE. 



251 



are currently understood, it means neither one nor the 
other, as every scholar knows perfectly well. It 
means the general receptacle of departed souls, with- 
out reference to the discriminations of character, or 
the final separation into antagonistic conditions. It 
is the scene proximate to this earth-scene, which the 
good and the bad enter alike by the gateway of death. 
It answers neither to our idea of heaven nor our idea 
of hell, but simply describes the gathering-place into 
wdiich all the generations have gone. Such is the 
" SheoP' of the Old Testament, and the Greek Seventy 
almost always render it by the word Hades.'' It 
never means Gehenna or hell in the modern sense. 
See the shocking absurdity of rendering the words of 
the sorrowing old patriarch : I will go down to hell 
(Sheol), to my son, mourning." So that at the time 
of Christ the Jewish mind, at least with so many as 
used the Septuagint version, — and these were the ma- 
jority, including the Apostles, — must have become 
perfectly familiarized with the meaning of " Hades," 
not as a place of final retribution, but the receptacle 
of all departed souls. 

2. We pass now to a second class of passages, — 
those which by direct or remote allusion represent 
Christ as entering Hades on some important mission. 
We will not now enlarge upon this topic; we only 
wish to hold the reader's mind steadily to the point 
that it was a topic familiar to the thought of the 
Apostles, and that it necessitates the doctrine of a 
mediate condition of the dead. 

When they speak of the resurrection of Christ, they 



252 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 

often include as an important element in their doc- 
trine the emergence of the soul of Christ out of Hades 
into heaven. Unlike other and inferior souls, who 
are compelled to remain a long time in that middle 
state, he came out of it the third day through his own 
Divine strength, and went up on high, thus making 
an open and available path to all his followers. Acts 
ii. 31-33 : " He (David) spake of the resurrection of 
Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, neither 
his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God 
raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, 
being by the right hand of God exalted,'^ etc. 

We understand Paul to speak to the same purpose 
in Ephesians iv. 7-11 : '^But unto every one of us is 
given grace according to the measure of the bounty 
of Christ. Wherefore the Scripture says (Psalm Ixviii. 
8), When he went up on high, he led captive the cap- 
tives, and gave gifts unto men. Now that word, ^ he 
went up,^ what does it imply but that he first went 
down into the lower parts of the earth? He that 
went down is the same as he that went up, far above 
all heavens, that he might fill all things." ^^The 
lower parts of the earth (s^c ^« xa-coTepa piiprj r-^c 
jvjc) is a periphrase for Hades.* 

1 Peter iii. 18-20: Christ once suffered for sins, 
the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, 
being put to death as respects the body, but made 
alive as respects the Spirit ; by which Spirit he wext 

AND Pl^EACHED TO THE SPIRITS WHO ARE IN CUS- 

* We are aAvare tliat tlie commentators try to make something 
else of this passage by sacrificing the literal sense. 



THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRIXE. 



253 



TODY,"^ wlio formerly were disobedient wlien tlie long- 
suffering of God in the days of ]N"oah waited while the 
ark was preparing." This passage has been called 
obscure and difficult. It is so only when we are 
determined to push aside the doctrine of the mediate 
place of the dead, to whom still Christ comes with 
the message of salvation. "With that doctrine the 
significance of the passage stands out bold and sharp 
enough. 

1 Peter iv. 5-7: Who (the Gentiles) shall give 
account to him who is ready to judge the liviug 
and the dead. For to this end the Gospel was 
PREACHED TO THE DEAD ALSO, that they might be 
judged according to men in the flesh, but live accord- 
ing to God in the sj^irit"; that is to say, that they 
may still have the same privilege that men in the 
flesh have of choosing the Gospel and of living accord- 
ing to God in the spirit. The fact that they died 
before the Gospel came, shall not exclude them from 
its offers of mercy. The choice lies with them just 
the same, and according to their choice they shall be 
judged, even as men in the flesh are judged — a prin- 
ciple of such unquestionable equity that it seems 
utterly strange how the expositors could have so 
stumbled at this passage, or set themselves to haggle 
at its most obvious meaning. 

Revelation i. 18: ^^I am he that liveth and was 
dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, Amen ; 

(^v/.om) does not mean of necessity a prison. It mav mean a 
place for those who are kept secure for a beneficent purpose. The 
Peshito Syriac, the eai'liest version of the Xew Testament, trans- 
lates, it is said, " He preached to those souls which icere delaiaed in. 
Hades." Christ's Mission,, by Huidekoper, j). 50. 
22 



254 



THE PXErMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



and have the keys of Hades and dearh/'—whicb 
means^ evidently^ Because I have been into Hades, 
and risen oat of itj I hold its keys in my hand, and 
can raise my people out of it also. 

3. "\^re cite a third class of passages^ in which, by 
other termSj and by incidental allusions, the Apostles 
indicate that the doctrine of a mediate place of souls 
was familiar to their thoughts. 

Acts ii. 3i : ^- Dayid is ^?ot ascended ixto the 
HEAYE>:s.'^ Most obviously Peter assumes before his 
hearers, a.^ a conceded fact, that David was still in 
Hades, and was to remain there till the final judg- 
ment; which leaves him at liberty to apply exclu- 
sively to Christ language in the Psalms vvdiich de- 
scribed the exaltation of some one to God"s right 
hand. The syllogism is, This canr.ot mean David, 
for you know yotirselves that he has n^t yet risen into 
the heavens. Yfe know that Christ has, and there- 
fore he is the person here described. 

Philippians ii. 10 : That at the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and 
thino;5 in earth, and tpiixgs exder the eaeth." 
The expression here used iyjj-riydo'Aco'A is the appro- 
priated synonym e of Hades. By things in heaveii, 
things on the earthy and things in Hades, the Apostle 
means to include the whole rational ttniverse. He 
does not name things in hell or Gehenna, f^r that was 
not conceived of as having inhabitants -until after the 
last judgment should take place. 

See Eubinson'ft Greek Lexicon, ad loc. Also Homer, Iliad, 
IX. 457. 



THE SCRIPTUEE DOCTRIXE. 



255 



4. We now approach reverently the language of 
the Divine Teacher himself ; and, as Paul will be 
found by and by using substantially the same imagery, 
it is of some consec^uence that we understand its mean- 
ing. ^Ye have seen already that Christ uses the \voYd 
Hades'^ in distinction from Gehenna, vvhen discours- 
ing of the state of the dead, and evoking his imagery 
from the realm of departed souls. 

Open, then, the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, 
and turn to that passage of awful sublimity, vrhose 
meaning, so far as we have seen, no exegesis has ever 
been able to evolve clearly : — 

'^Wlien the Son of Man shall come in his glory, 
and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon 
the throne of his glory. And before him shall be 
gathered all nations, and he shall separate them one 
from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from 
the goats.'^ 

The scene of this judgment and separation is the 
point to which we wish to call special attention. Is 
it in the natural world, or is it in the spiritual ? It 
is where all the nations are gathered together, and 
therefore it must be the realm to which all the gene- 
rations have gone. The theology which places the 
scene of this great drama upon the earth, and makes 
the subjects of it the corpses that have been exhumed 
from the sepulchres, has not the faintest hint for its 
support in the record- itself. The subjects of this 
judgment are those who have passed out of natural 
conditions, into that state where all the peoples are 
gathered, and where they wait for that " coming of 
the Son of Man" which divides the peoples asunder. 



256 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



And wliat is this ^^comiDs: of the Sod of Man in 
his glory/' — " coming in the clouds of heaven/' — when 
he sends forth liis angels " with the great sound of a 
trumpet/' to gather together his elect?" What is it 
but the Christy the Eternal Word, breaking on the 
soul in clearer splendor, so as to search it and show 
its quality ? what but the voice of truth sent home to 
the conscience, as if tongued for a sharper utterance ? 
Conceive all men to have passed from earth into a 
mediate state in the spiritual world, each one bearing 
his own affinities, and polarized with the love of the 
good and the true, or of the evil and the false. Con- 
ceive, moreover, that into such mediate world the 
Christ shall appear, and the heavens open down their 
angelic illuminations. What must follow from the 
irrepealable laws of the human mind? Exactly what 
is here described, or rather painted by the Divine 
pencil in colors of flame. The peoples and nations 
would be cloven asunder, part drawn up among the 
blest societies, and part repelled or driven deeper 
down among the coverings of darkness, and " Hades " 
would be emptied of its inhabitants. What the primi- 
tive Church believed universally, what the Apostles 
preached with fragmentary speech, we have here set 
forth in majestic utterance, not as the arbitrary ap- 
pointment of God, but as the grand result of the 
eternal laws of being. Must not this be so, we ex- 
claim, even if no Bible had ever told us? We do 
not say that the doctrine of a mediate state is asserted 
in terms in this discourse of our Saviour; we say it is 
presupposed, and we are confident that no other view 
can give his language a tolerable explanation. 



THE SCRirXURE DOCTRINE. 



257 



We are now prepared to take in the plenary sense 
of a passage to which we have t\yice referred, but to 
which until now we could not oifer a complete illus- 
tration. " Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming 
in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his 
voice and shall come forth ; they that have done good 
unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done 
evil to the resurrection of damnation." (John v. 28, 
29.) The leading terms of this passage we have 
already explained. The ^' voice of the Son of Man 
is Christianity preached and applied, or, what is the 
same thing, the efflux of Divine truth as it touches 
the conscience. And it is obvious now why Christ 
enounces here a universal rule of judgment, to be- 
applied to all men, not only to those who were then 
living, but to all who had ever lived or ever should 
live. ^' The hour is coming, and now is, when the 
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man." And 
immediately after, "The hour is coming when all 
WHO ARE IN THE GRAVES " shall hear the same voice; 
and here the Saviour sends forward his thought to 
the gathering-place of all the peoples, where every 
soul shall be opened up to the same truth which he 
was declaring on the earth ; shall have its quality 
shown and its class and order assigned to it in the 
ranks of the universe. Not only those who have 
heard Christ preached on the earth, but all that have 
ever lived, shall hear the Gospel and be judged by 
the Gospel, according as they have "done good" or 
"done evil," under previous privilege, or by such 
light of nature as had been given them while living 
in the flesh. 

22 * R 



258 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 

John vi. 39 : "This is the Father's will who hath 
sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should 
lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last 
day." Verse 44 : " i^o man can come to me except 
the Father that hath sent me draw him, and I will 
raise him up at the last day." John xii. 48 : "He 
that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath 
one that judgeth him : the word that I have spoken, 
the same shall judge him in the last day." " The 
last day^^ is a phrase which has been so appropriated 
to describe an imaginary destruction of this material 
structure, that the clear force of this language is liable 
to escape us. And yet nothing could be in more 
complete harmony with our preceding exposition, than 
these words of our Saviour. It is evident to us that 
"the last day" means that grand crisis of humanity 
referred to all through the l^ew Testament, and that 
these sweet and blessed promises of our Lord, alike 
with the warnings of the passage last quoted, point to 
the solemn results of that crisis. " I will raise him 
up at the last day," is the same as saying, I will draw 
him up from the mediate state into the angelic abodes 
by the bonds of attractive love, when the separating 
judgment shall come on, and each determines to the 
place he loves, as doves tliat fly to their windows. 



CHAPTER V. 



ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION". 

St. Paul was born aucl educated in a city where 
flourished the most celebrated schools of the Grecian 
philosophy. Afterward he went up to Jerusalem, and 
there at the feet of Gamaliel, the most distinguished 
of the Jewish Eabbins, who was called afterward the 
Beauty of the Law, his mind was stored with He- 
brew learning, and imbibed the very spirit of the 
Jewish theoloo^y. He was a Pharisee of the Phari- 
sees, and though he had become familiar while at 
Tarsus with the Greek language, literature, and phil- 
osophy, he adhered firmly to the faith of his fathers. 
Of course his mind had become thoroughly indoc- 
trinated in the tenets of his sect touching the resur- 
rection of the dead, and the formulas under which 
they bodied forth their doctrine had become to him 
as household words. Christianity came afterward, 
using the same forms of speech and imagery on this 
subject, which, however, were not only filled out with 
a new spirit, but made also the receptacles of new 
ideas. 

We are now prepared for a full exj^osition of Paul's 
language when he touches upon this theme. This he 
does three times, but he handles it at large in his first 

259 



260 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



letter to the Corinthians^ among whom the doctrine 
had been explained away, and its substance nearly 
evaporated in the gilded fog of Gnosticism. It is 
inferred that some of the Corinthian teachers had 
made the resurrection a mere figure of speech, mean- 
ino^ nothinof more than a rising^ out of io^norance into 
knowledge, out of sin into holiness, in this present 
^Yorld.'^ Hence Paul sets forth to them the Chris- 
tian doctrine, philosophically and at length, and an- 
swers the objections of the cavilers as he goes along. 
After appealing to Christ as the grand exemplar of 
man's resurrection, citing witnesses, and taking care 
to say that he had seen him with his own eyes in the 
resurrection state, his argument proceeds mainly un- 
der two divisions. First, he unfolds the doctrine 
logically and rationally, and, secondly, he describes 
some of its concomitants now for the first time dis- 
closed. 

Under the first of these heads he develops his doc- 
trine of a spiritual body, in contradistinction from 
the natural, and to rise out of it as the blade rises 
out of the kernel that dies. He brushes away the 
objections w'hich come from the false idea that the 
resurrection body is to be the same body that died. 
It is not to be the same, but a body of another species, 
emerging from the natural one, substantial and im- 
mortal. " There are celestial bodies and bodies ter- 
restrial, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the 
glory of the terrestrial is another." He then pro- 

* Of the same nature evidently was the heresy of Hymeneus 
and Philetus, who taught that " the resurrection is J3ast already." 
2 Timothy ii. 17, 18, 



ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION. 



261 



ceecls to depict the concomitants of his doctrine^ the 
resurrection culminating into its last results, thus : 

" Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all 
sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye, at the last trump ; for the trum- 
pet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- 
ruptible, and we shall be changed. I'or this corrupti- 
ble must put on incorruption, and this mortal must 
put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall 
have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have 
put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the 
saying that is written, ^ Death is swallowed up in 
victory. O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, 
where is thy victory 

1. Observe, first, that, while Paul asserts with great 
emphasis the fact of the resurrection, he does not as- 
sert the Pharisaic notion of a re-incarnation. That 
must have been familiar to his thoughts, but he re- 
jects it altogether, having just unfolded his philoso- 
phy of the spiritual body, which totally excluded the 
Pharisaic dogma. " The dead shall be raised f they 
shall be brought up from the mediate state in bodies 
which are incorruptible, and which can die no more, 
so as to warrant the language of exultation, O 
Hades, where is thy victory This, and not the 
reanimation of dead bodies that lie in the graves, is 
here asserted by the Apostle in most unequivocal lan- 
guage. Hades, or the mediate world, where all the 
generations of Adam had gone, burdened still with 
hereditary evil, should be despoiled of its captives 
through Christ, who raises up his own out of it, and 
so completes their redemption. 



262 



THE PxVEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



2. The same imagery is here employed by Paul 
that Christ had used before him in describing the 
same consummation. " The trumpet shall sound^ 
and the dead shall be raised." We trust the reader 
does not need to have it proved to him, that there 
is no connection between blowing a trumpet over 
graveyards and the reanimation of the sleepers, inas- 
much as their organs of hearing are not only gone, 
but changed into other organizations. Where there are 
no ears to receive the sound, it matters not whether 
the sound be loud or low, a trumpet-blast or a whis- 
per, or wdiether there be no sound at all. " The trump 
of God," both in the language of Christ and that of 
St. John, in the Apocalypse, is an image specially 
appropriated to denote the efflux of Divine Truth as 
it falls on the consciences of men, so that Paul here 
describes the same thing that Christ had done before, 
— the descent of the Eternal Word, or the " voice of 
the Son of Man," into the mediate place of souls ; 
that Word wdiich gathers its own around it, and 

raises them up at the last day." 

3. The language of Paul in the first part of this 
chapter, which seems at first obscure, becomes nov/ 
translucent enough. Xow is Christ risen from the 
dead, and hecome the first f nuts of them that slept." 
And again, Every man in his own order. Christ 
the first fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at 
his coming." Christ is the first of the human race 
who has arisen out of tlie mediate world into heaven. 
He burst the prison-gates, and made a clear pathway 
between Hades and the skies. And when he comes 
again, breaking through the clouds of heaven into 



ST. PAUL OX THE RESUPwtlECTIOX. 



263 



the mediate world, '^they that are Christ's/' or tliose 
who have been touched with his life and spirit, will 
be the first to be drawn up into his complete redemp- 
tion ; or, as the thought is otherwise expressed, will 
^Miave part in the first resurrection.'^ This idea, we 
have no doubt, is in the Apostle's mind when he 
speaks of himself as striving, "if by any means he 
might attain unto the resurrection from the dead," 
using the word here in the special sense of emergence 
out of the mediate state into the blest societies of the 
redeemed. 

4. In the fervency of his faith the Apostle evidently 
expected that the time would come, and was even 
close at hand, when Christian believers, while yet in 
the flesh, would become so completely regenerated, 
redeemed, and glorified, as to render no longer neces- 
sary any descent into a mediate world. Their change, 
while yet on earth, would be so complete, that their 
translation to heaven would be immediate and instan- 
taneous, when they had done with time. " We shall 
not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.'^ By sleep- 
ing, or, as he has it in a parallel passage, " sleeping in 
Jesus," he does not mean the repose of the dead 
bodies in the tombs ; he means the repose and waiting 
of the departed saints in Hades. Yv^e shall not all, 
he says, pass through that mediate state of waiting 
and repose. The time is near, when the trump of 
God, which raises the dead out of Hades, shall so 
change us in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
that we shall be prepared for our immediate ascent 
ijito heaven, when unclothed of mortality. In other 
words, under the dispensation of the second advent 



264 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



of Christ, such shall be the effluence of his truth, and 
such its increased power over the believer, that it 
shall change him at once into a glorified saint, pre- 
pared already for his ascent into heaven. We are 
candid to say that we suppose Paul used this language 
in a sense more strictly literal than our exposition 
implies. In common with the early Church, he 
looked evidently for some personal reappearing of 
Christ to his Church on earth during the lifetime of 
the Apostles, and we have no doubt that in this ex- 
pectation this language had to his mind a more special 
significance than the Holy Spirit intended, or than 
was warranted by the subsequent history. And yet 
it sets forth a great truth ; this, namely, that, under 
the influence of Christ's second or spiritual coming, 
the concomitants of death shall yet be so abolished, 
that the believer shall not so much die as become 
transfigured for the skies. 

1 Thessalonians iv. 13-18. We turn now to a 
parallel passage, in which the same truths are asserted, 
and in nearly the same order. The church at Thes- 
salonica, probably from a too literal interpretation of 
the language of Christ, had, in common with the first 
Christians, fallen upon the belief that he was soon to 
appear again in person, and wind up the affairs of 
this world. Amid difficulties and persecutions, they 
looked forward to this reappearing with impatient 
longings, when Christ would overthrow the enemies 
of his Church and establish his kingdom on the earth. 
But a question now troubled them. How would it 
be with their friends who had died, and who would 
not be with them to witness the second advent of the 



ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION". 265 

liorcl ■? Probably there had been recent bereavements 
in the church at Thessalonica. Will not our joy (say 
they) of witnessing the second coming of Christ be 
much diminished, because the dear friends we have 
lost cannot be here to share it with us ? It was in 
part to meet this state of mind that Paul wrote from 
Corinth the first letter to the Thessalonians. 

I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, 
concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not 
even as others which have no hope. For as surely as 
we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so surely 
will God through him bring with Jesus those who are 
asleep. For this we say unto you by the word of the 
Jjord, that we who are alive and remain unto the 
coming of the Lord shall not enter into his presence 
sooner than the dead. For the Lord himself shall 
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of 
the archangel and with the trump of God. And the 
dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who may be 
alive and remain unto that day shall be caught up 
with them among the clouds, to meet the Lord in the 
air, and so both we and they shall be for ever with 
the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these 
words.^^ 

The annunciation here made, drawn out in distinct 
clauses, and in harmony with Paul's pneumatology, 
would be as follows : — 

1. Christ is to reappear in great power and glory 
from the heavens, not only to his people on the earth, 
but also to them who have ^' fallen asleep,'' and rest 
in the mediate state of the dead. 

2. Hence they, as well as we, those who have died, 

23 



266 



THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



as well as those wlio are now alive, will be raised up 
into heaven, and there meet each other again and be 
for ever with the Lord. 

3. Hence, though the believers who may be living 
at that day may be so changed and glorified while yet 
on earth, as not to enter the mediate world, but have 
an immediate transit to heaven, they will have no ad- 
vantage over those who had died before, and will not 
anticipate them in their entrance upon the future 
glory. 

4. The voice of the archangel " and " the trump 
of God" are expressions equivalent to those of our 
Saviour, "the voice of the Son of Man,'' the angel 
sent forth " with a great sound of a trumpet," and 
mean, wherever they occur, in the symbolic language 
of prophecy, the influx of Divine Truth with power, 
or heaven opening down into the soul with intenser 
and clearer utterance.* 

5. Though Paul here, as before, evidently expected 
a second and personal advent of Christ, and thought 
it might be near at hand, and though this gives a 
somewhat sharper literalism to his language, yet it is 
an expectation, and not an opinion, and seems to have 
exerted no adverse influence over his life or his system 
of doctrine. 

6. The expression " to meet the Lord in the air," 
will receive explanation when we come to consider 
Paul's supposed naturalism. 

A third passage in which this theme is specially 
treated is found 2 Corinthians v. 1-10, commencing, 

* That such is the prophetic meaning of this phraseology, see, 
who will, Eev. viii. 2, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13 ; ix. 14. Also Psalm xlvii. 5. 



ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION. 



267 



" For we know, if our earthly house of this tabernacle 
were dissolved, we have a building of God^ a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'' This 
does not present any important point distinct from 
those of the two passages we have just quoted. By 
a careful collation of the three, with a slight para- 
phrase, the writer's thought would be enunciated as 
follows : — 

"Though our earthly body be dissolved, we still 
bear away from it a body which cannot die. Thus all 
the generations from the first Adam to Christ have 
gone and wait in Hades. But Hades cannot retain 
for ever those that belong to the Lord. His second 
appearing shall be there, as well as here, and his truth 
shall sink with trumpet voice among those who have 
died, as well as those who are living. Then those 
who have died in the faith of Christ will be raised up 
into heaven, there to be with the Lord. There we 
shall meet the friends who have died before us. 
Though tve may be so changed while on earth, by the 
new infiax of Divine Power, that those of us who may 
be living at the expected consummation shall enter 
heaven instantly at death, we shall not anticipate 
those who have died before and entered Hades. 
Christ will have brought them up thence to meet us 
above, and so we with them shall be for ever with tlie 
Lord. Then death no longer will have any terror, 
and Hades no longer will have the victory," 



CHAPTER VI. 



JEWISH IDEAS COMPABED WITH CHRISTIAN. 

The rude primitive ideas, whether Jewish or 
heathen, on the subject of the future life, were grossly 
naturalistic. Both Heaven and Hades were located 
in natural space. The earth was a broad, level plane, 
and Heaven was situated vertically overhead, while 
Hades was situated directly beneath, and was hence 
" the underworld." Therefore the periphrase, " things 
in heaven, things in earth, and things under the earth," 
comprehended the whole creation. This (revelation 
aside) was the substance both of the Hebrew and the 
Pagan mythology. Heaven, however, was not single, 
but multiform, and the Hebrew almost always used 
the word in the plural number. The first or lowest 
heaven was the region of the air, or the earth's atmo- 
sphere, in which the clouds appear. The second or 
middle heaven was the starry firmament. The third 
or highest was above the firmament, and there God 
himself dwelt in his ineffable splendors. The later^ 
Rabbins increase the number to seven, but the primi- 
tive conception seems to have been only that of these 
three heavens, — the aerial, the stellar, and the highest, 
called the heaven of heavens. 

The Hebrew Sheol, or the Greek Hades, which 
corresponds very nearly to it, being under the earth, 

26S 



JEWISH IDEAS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN. 269 



was deprived of the suuliglit. Hades means, ety- 
mologically, a dark place ; for since the earth was au 
immense plane, it cut oif the light of the sun and the 
stars from the people of the underworld. It was an 
obscure and shadowy region. The Greek Hades, 
however, came to have its Elysian fields, and the 
Hebrew Sheol its lower paradise, where the better 
and purer of the departed spirits were gathered to- 
gether. All, however, who were in this obscure 
underworld, pined for the upper regions, and there 
were two methods by which they might ascend again 
to the earth. One was by the transmigration of souls, 
the other was by the resurrection of the dead. 

The first was the Pythagorean doctrine, and was a 
conception essentially and exclusively heathen. Trans- 
migration is simply passing into other bodies through 
the process of natural birth, and living over again the 
life in the flesh. Virgil describes a whole shoal of 
these ghosts in Hades, longing for their transmigra- 
tion into the earthly life, once more to enjoy the upper 
light and air. 

The Jews, or rather a sect among them, believed 
the same end would be attained by resurrection, and 
re-incarnation in the identical bodies that had died. 
The "resurrection of the dead'^ was an idea entirely 
foreign to the Greek mythology. It was the Hebrew 
method of getting souls out of the underworld, though 
it may not have been of Hebrew origin. It involved 
the idea of raising them up from Sheol, the good into 
an upper or terrestrial paradise, or else into the 
heavens; the bad only to be condemned and re- 
manded to a deeper place in the underworld, called 

23 « 



270 THE PXEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



Gehenna. The idea of re-incarnation was not essen- 
tially included in that of the resurrection, but was 
wholly extrinsic, and might be coupled with it or not, 
to suit the general faith of the believer. The Phari- 
sees, as we have said, believed it only as respects the 
saints, and the Essenes rejected it altogether.* 

Such were the ideas of mankind while dominated 
by the senses. Similar to these are the ideas of 
natural men in all ages, who attain only to a belief 
in a naturalized spirit- world. Now that science has 
demonstrated that the earth is not a flat surface, with 
a region of shadow under it, but a globe that revolves 
about the sun, hell is located sometimes wWiin the 
earth, as by Bishop Horsley, sometimes in the craters 
of the moon, as by Mr. Harbaugh, — anywhere in 
space that affords a spot sufficiently uncomfortable for 
the purpose. There is no question that the Jews up 
to the very time of Christ were immersed completely 
in this naturalism, notwithstanding the disclosures of 
their own Scriptures and the highest boon of the 
Gospel is a pneumatology that raises the believer 
thoroughly out of it. 

This is done by making the natural world eepee- 
* The language of Josephus is : " The Pharisees say that all 
souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are re- 
moved into other bodies [re-incarnated], but that the souls of bad ^ 
men are subjected to eternal punishment." (Wars, II. 10, 14.) 
Whereupon the annotator of Josephus remarks, that this looks 
like a contradiction to St. Paul's account, that the Jews allowed 
" that there should be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just 
and the unjust" This apparent contradiction arises from persist- 
ently confounding two things, and identifying the resurrection of 
the dead (emergence out of Hades to judgment) with the re-in- 
carnation of the soul. 



JEWISH IDEAS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN. 271 



SENTx\TIVE OF THE SPIRITUAL. Revektioil doGS liot 

reject the old nomenclature, but fills it with new ideas. 
The natural world, as it lay on the conceptions of 
natural men, is taken up and framed into a picture- 
language, and thus made to represent the things which 
are invisible. Indeed, the most beneficent office which 
nature performs is to image forth on the plane of the 
senses what the senses of themselves could not appre- 
hend, and so stand before us as the symbol of higher 
realities. The material universe becomes the treasure- 
house of imagery, w^^^^^eby spiritual truth can be 
bodied forth, so that the things which are visible are 
made the living transparencies through which we gaze 
inward upon eternal verities. 

In the system of truth taught by Jesus Christ, the 
future bliss and glory are not a place vertically higher 
up in the air than the earth, but a state of mind raised 
into a higher degree of life than that of the corporeal 
senses. The skies hang over us in their eternal purity, 
above the clouds and the storms and the rolling thun- 
ders, smiling down over all earthly turmoil in their 
deep and boundless tranquillity. What other image 
could be selected to describe the souPs unfluctuating 
bliss, and its serene abodes in the realms beyond 
death and the grave? Precisely the same word, 
oupauoc, — the heavens, — is used by Christ, as was 
used to denote the visible expanse above ; but in his 
language it is not the starry firmament, but the spiritual 
state here and hereafter, which the starry firmament 
represents. The word Gehenna'^ meant, originally, 
a loathsome valley, and, in the language of the later 
Rabbins, the deepest pit in the underworld. In their 



272 



THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



topography of the universe it was the exact opposite 
of the highest heavens^ as fiir beneath the earth as 
heaven is high above it. Christ uses this very image 
to describe the spiritual state opposite to that of 
heaven ; the condition of the mind with all its powers 
inverted, immersed in the darkness of its own delu- 
sions, and preyed upon by its unclean and lurid pas- 
sions. This is Gehenna, away down in the spiritual 
nadir, and these are the infernal fires. The visible 
universe, above and below, becomes the ever-present 
symbol to describe opposite spiritual states and their 
ultimations in a spiritual world hereafter; and so 
heaven and Gehenna are not localities in space, but 
representative images of things that transcend the 
senses. The style of speech which our Saviour adopts 
in describing his kingdom, his second coming, and the 
opposite results of receiving and rejecting him, is that 
of parable, or comparison, throughout; making all 
nature a vast analogue of the spirit, and a copying 
down of eternity into time. Thus he lifts us out of 
naturalism, and sets us face to face with the everlast- 
ing verities. 

Well had it been if the Church could have been 
kept on the level of this lofty spiritualism, and could 
have ever seen the truths which, in his speech, shine 
through and transfigure the letter, like clouds made 
white and purpling with the sunlight. But always 
the natural mind relapses into literalism, like heavy 
bodies that fall to the earth. So the Christian Church 
began to relapse very early. . His promised spiritual 
coming was understood to be a literal and personal 
one, even in the times of the Apostles ; and as early 



JEWISH IDEAS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN. 273 



as the second and third centuries, if not before, we 
find the old Pharisaic doctrine of re-incarnation cou- 
pled with that of the resurrection, and even substi- 
tuted for it ; we find Heaven and Hades made locali- 
ties again in space, to be reached by locomotion ; we 
find, in fact, the Jewish pneumatology in its main 
features reproduced. Origen, and the Alexandrian 
school generally, kept out of this slough ; but the 
Western Churches went down heavily into it, there 
to "grow the grimy color of the ground on which 
they are feeding.'^ 

S 



CHAPTER VII 



THE ALLEGED Is^ATUEALISM OF ST. PAUL. 

A MOST important question remains to us, and one 
which affects materially the authority of the great 
Apostle to the Gentiles. He affirms that he was 
caught up into the third or highest heavens, and he 
could not say whether in the body or out of it. He 
speaks of Hades as the underworld, (^'things under 
the earth/^) and of Christ as having descended into 
it. He describes the second coming of Christ from 
heaven as sudden and unexpected, " with a shout,'^ 
and with ^^the trump of God.'^ He affirms that, 
when the dead are to be raised out of Hades, those 
living at the time shall be caught up, and with them 
'^meet the Lord in the air.'' These and similar allu- 
sions provoke the inquiry. Does Paul use this language 
as liter aly or does he employ this imagery as representa- 
tive f Did he still believe in the Jewish and Heathen 
topography of the universe, that the heavens are ver- 
tically over our heads, into which the saints are to be 
" caught up " at the last day, and that Hades, or the 
abode of departed spirits, is underground ? And 
when he says Christ will descend from heaven, and 
the archangel blow his trumpet, does he mean a de- 
scent through the air, and a blast to be blown on the 
natural ear? In short, was St. Paul, notwithstand- 

274 



THE ALLEGED N A^TUEALISM OF ST. PAUL. 275 



ing his extraordinaiy illumination, still locked in 
naturalism, and is this what he has taught to the 
churches ? 

It has been supposed, and ably argued, that this is 
the case."^ Paul had been a Pharisee, and his mind 
had become thoroughly imbued with Jewish lore ; and 
it is inferred that he has imported the Jewish pneu- 
matology into his scheme of Christian doctrine. 

We have studied his writings with reference to this 
point, and our conviction is clear that this is not the 
case, and that no system of naturalism was ever taught 
by the Apostle. We will give our reasons in full, and 
then abide the judgment of the reader. 

1. All the imagery which he employs is found also 
in the picture-language of the Saviour, wherein he 
describes the second coming, the last judgment, and 
the spiritual world. The heavens {obpavo'c), and the 
descent of the Son of Man out of them with " a great 
sound of a trumpet," Gehenna and Hades or the un- 
derworld, are terms, as we have just seen, employed 
by Christ in the way of parable ; and if he committed 
these truths to his Apostle, would he not convey them 
under the same divinely-selected symbols ? Paul in- 
troduces his description with the solemn averment, 
^' Behold, I show you a mystery," and " This I de- 
clare unto you by the word of the Lord and it is 
some confirmation of his declaration, that he goes on 
to employ the very imagery drawn from the natural 
world which the Lord had selected before ; as if, when 

* See an article in the Christian Examiner for March, 1853, 
" Paul's Doctrine of the Last Things." 



276 



THE PXEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



these trutlis riislied in upon liiiii from their Divine 
Sourcej they came in the same investiture, and thus 
claimed their utterance from his lips. That Paul 
saw the vrhole range of meaning as Christ had done 
in the language that came to him, were too much to 
affirm ; for the long sweep of the centuries does not 
yet fulfill these high prophetic enunciations. That 
he perverted it or sunk it into a sense merely literal, 
we have no right to say, unless there is some collat- 
eral evidence, drawn from his language and experience 
elsewhere, that warrants the affirmation. 

2. But the experience of the great Apostle shuts 
out the possibility that he could have been in the 
bondao;e of a naturalized faith. His inward eve had 
been couched and opened; yea, he had been admitted 
by introversion among those " things in heaven " 
whereof he speaks. He had seen the Lord after his 
resurrection among the supersensual glories. He had 
seen him, not with the fleshy eye, but with his spirit 
laid open beneath the insufferable blaze. Can we 
suppose he believed that the Christ who smote him 
to the earth under his too ardent mercy, descended 
to him from somewhere beyond the stars, and in a 
material body, and not rather that he broke on his 
inner sight from a sphere above the natural, and 
within the bourn of immortality ? ^' I was not dis- 
obedient to the heavenly visiox.^' The word he uses 
is oTzzaalaj a word, we have said, specially appro- 
priated to describe supersensual sight, and never used 
for the perception of objects on the plane of nature. 
He assnres us that this vision was afterward repeated, 



i 



THE ALLEGED NATUEALISM OF ST. PAUL. 277 



and tliat be liad direct and open communication Avith 
the Lord Jesus. How utterly improbable, therefore, 
is the hypothesis, that Paul should have been igno- 
rant of the fact that the heavens to which the Lord 
had arisen were not higher up in space, but higher 
up in the order of existence ! How groundless the 
presumption, that he did not know the nature of the 
terminus that divides the natural from the spiritual 
world ! 

This suggests to us what was the probable nature 
of his anticipations touching the personal coming of 
the Lord Jesus. He probably expected a second ad- 
vent for the Church, such as had come within the 
range of his own wonderfid experience ; not a com- 
ing again in the flesh, and out of the literal heavens, 
but such a demonstration from Christ and his holy 
angels out of the spiritual sphere as arrested him on 
his way to Damascus, and should yet overwhelm the 
enemies of the Gospel, and bring a fallen world to 
its crisis. The sensualized conceptions of the mille- 
narians could never have entered his mind ; they were 
discordant with his whole scheme of doctrine, and for 
any trace of them you shall search his writings in 
vain. 

3. There is a remarkable passage in whi<?h the 
Apostle discloses unmistakably what he understands 
by being "caught up in heaven.'' That experience, 
he says, had been vouchsafed to him. "I know a 
man who was caught up fourteen years ago, — whether 
in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God 
knoweth, — caught up, I say, in the power of Christ, 

24 



278 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



even to the third heaven. And I knew that such a 
man — whether in the body or out of the body I can- 
not tell, God knoweth — was caught up into paradise, 
and heard unspeakable words.'' These he gives us 
as instances of ^' visions and revelations.'' The word 
is again oKzaaiaQ, — a word appropriated to describe 
open spiritual perceptions while the corporeal senses 
are sealed up, — and his meaning is, I was raised up 
as to my inward and immortal nature among the 
scenery of the highest heaven, and so completely 
were my external senses closed, and so unconscious 
was I of the mortal body, that I did not know then, 
and cannot tell now, whether I remained in it or 
not." He might very well have been in doubt, for 
either of those psychological states is possible, and 
not always distinguishable by him who is the subject 
of them. Since man is the denizen of two worlds, 
his spirit may be introverted and raised up among 
supersensual things, its vital connection with the 
mortal body yet remaining; or the same may take 
place by dissolving that connection, which is the 
simple process of death. That the Apostle here 
recognizes the fact of a spiritual world above natural 
space and out of it, and to be entered by introversion 
and not locomotion, is past all question. The third 
heaven, according to the Jewish topography, was the 
one above the firmament. Did Paul suppose that he 
had been up on a journey beyond the fixed stars, and 
was in doubt whether he took his body with him 
through those billions of miles or not? It i^^ould 
require some boldness, we should think, to charge 
him wdth an absurdity quite so concentrated as that. 



THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL. 279 



4. We have not merely Paul's experience, we have 
his spiritual philosophy drawn out with remarkable 
distinctness, and it shows that no one was more 
clearly cognizant than he of the difference between 
natural and spiritual substance. His chapter on the 
resurrection ought to exonerate him for ever from the 
charge of naturalism, since it was written expressly 
to refute the first principle of the naturalistic faith. 
That faith assumes that veritable body is composed 
of matter alone, and that none other is conceivable 
or possible. Hence the fantasies both of the Hebrew 
and the Heathen mythology. Hence the ghosts that 
flit in their underworld ; the phantom nations,'' as 
Homer calls them, pining to come up again and be 
indued with flesh and blood. Hence the Pharisaic 
dogma of the re-incarnation, and the Pythagorean 
notion of the transmigration of souls. Matter alone, 
in their philosophy, constitutes real body, and the 
bodies of the ghosts in Hades were so rarefied, that 
^neas in embracing old Anohises found he had 
grasped nothing but an empty shade. It was com- 
posed of matter too aerial and attenuated, and hence 
the spectres longed for their solid investiture again. 
All but carnal existence was wan and mournful. 
Paul enounces a principle that subverts this whole 
fabric of superstition. " There are celestial bodies 
and bodies terrestrial," and the celestial bodies surpass 
the others immeasurably in being incorruptible, come- 
ly, and strong. They differ not in degrees of solidity, 
as one of air differs from one of flesh ; they differ 
generically, and on this difference he predicates the 
distinction between the life before death and the life 



280 THE PXEUMATOLOGY of ST. PAUL. 



after. This essential dualism discretes for ever the 
two worlds of spirit and matter; whereas in the 
creed of naturalism they run together, spirit being 
exhaled and sublimated matter, or nothing at all. 
Hence Paul, in asserting the doctrine of the resur- 
rection, rises sublimely clear both of the Pythagorean 
and Jewish dogmas ; but without this dualism he 
would have fallen inevitably upon the Pharisaic 
tenet of re-incarnation, and stuck hopelessly there. 
As a disciple of Gamaliel, it had been made familiar 
to his thought. As a Christian, he rejects it with an 
expression of scorn. Unless he had been taken up 
into the counsels of the risen and glorified Christ, he 
could never have evolved a spiritual philosophy from 
which every element of the naturalism of his age, and 
of the sect to which he had once belonged, is extruded 
and cleared away. 

5. It hence becomes plain enough that the obpavoi 
of St. Paul were not the material canopy of the old 
Hebrew mythology, but the spiritual heavens of which 
that is made the type and shadow. They were that 
upper sphere into which his own spirit had been 
caught, and in which he had seen the glorified Sa- 
viour, and received a commission from his lips. We 
see no reason to doubt that he uses the word " heav- 
en in the same representative sense that Christ had 
done; the state of eternal peace imaged forth sub- 
limely in those galaxies hung down by the evening 
skies. Christ uses the word in the plural number, 
as if indicating the fact that the state of the blest is 
not single, but multiform, rising upward in degree ; 



THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL. 281 



just as the expanse over us rises above earth's lowly 
plains, sky beyond sky, with growing and multiply- 
ing splendors. The Hebrew conception of three 
heavens, the lowest, the middle, and the highest, 
thus represents the heavens of the world to come. If 
Paul speaks with any decent consistency, he uses the 
word drjp (air), which means the aerial or lower sky, 
and the phrase rpiro^ ohpavb^^ the third heaven, after 
the same analogy ; making the Hebrew topography of 
the visible expanse to furnish a language descriptive 
of the invisible glories. When he says he was caught 
lip into paradise, does he mean that he was taken into 
a hanging garden overhead ? i^ot at all. IsTo more 
does he mean by the heavens (whether the aerial or 
lowest, or the third, the supreme) the visible dome 
above us, but the eternal abodes. And in describing 
the ascent of "the saints that sle^Dt'^ out of Hades, 
or the mediate state, he would of course make them 
reach first the heaven proximate to them, and not the 
third or highest of all. Thither, too, their friends 
from earth would rise first, and there they would 
meet each other. " We who are alive and remain 
shall be caught up together with them to meet the 
Lord in the lower sky, and so shall we ever be with 
the Lord.'^ Allusion, too, is evidently had to the 
appearances at the Lord's ascension, when he arose 
and melted from sight in a cloud on the visible ex- 
panse of air, the outward semblances indicating the 
spiritual reality to the men who stood gazing below. 

The writings of St. Paul are fragmentary, and con- 
tain nowhere an orderly development of his whole 
plan of doctrine. That plan only gleams out upon 

24 * 



282 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 

US now and then, here an arch and there a column ; 
leaving us to infer the consistence and grandeur of 
the edifice. We readily admit that there are phrases 
which may be singled out and fitted in to a system of 
materialism. But the main sweep of his argument, 
his being made a personal witness of the risen Christ, 
his whole wonderful experience under Christianity, 
and the prominent features of his system of pneu- 
matology, standing out in the boldest relief, are each 
and all totally inconsistent with materialism. Single 
phrases ' are to be interpreted in the light of his 
known spiritual philosophy, and are not by a narrow 
and tortuous criticism to be made to say something in 
conflict with it ; and then that philosophy becomes 
luminous enough, and breaks from the old Judaism 
as from the shell that had enclosed it. He uses the 
terms which had belonged to the old topography of 
the material universe, but both its overworld and its 
underworld become the images and representatives of 
eternal things. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE HADES OF CHEISTIANITY. 

We trust that the reader is abundantly satisfied as 
to the Christian meaning of the words "heaven'^ and 
^^hell," and that they are rescued effectually and 
totally from the circle both of pagan and Jewish ideas. 
If heaven is not the zenith overhead, but the zenith 
of the eternal purity and peace, — if Gehenna or hell 
is not the lowest pit in the depths under our feet, but 
the nadir of a reversed and degraded humanity, — 
then it becomes obvious enough what the spiritual 
Hades is, or the condition mediate between. It is not 
a place under ground in the natural loorld, hut a posi- 
tion in the spiritual loorld to tvhich that place answered 
as the image and the sign. 

Two ideas are vastly prominent in the writings of 
the Apostle : first, that under " the Law," or the 
ante-Christian economy, there was no power available 
to the race for removing from it the burden of heredi- 
tary evil ; secondly, that Christ brings this power, so 
that "the curse'' rolls off and humanity can spring at 
once into its glorious fraition. These two thoughts, 
putting Christ and the Law in contrast, reappear in 
almost every page. 

Hence none who died under former dispensations 

283 



284 



THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



can have entered heaven. From Adam to Moses, 
as well as from Moses to Christ, " death reigned." 
He does not mean physical dissolution, for that must 
always take place; but he means that inheritance of 
a disordered moral nature which had been a cleaving 
curse to all the generations. Men might fulfill all 
the outward ceremonial righteousness of Judaism, 
but still the curse would cling to them, and conse- 
quently when they entered the spiritual world they 
would remain under its shadow, and there they 
must wait till the great redemption comes. There 
even the saints and patriarchs of the former dispen- 
sations must be, for they are still under the bondage 
of entailed moral evil, still ^'included under sin," 
which no religion of mere legal observances could 
ever remove. Hence the state of the dead was neither 
heaven nor hell. The entailed burden rested still 
on all alike. "The whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth in pain." 

But this state of things was not always to continue. 
The heavens have opened at last, and the Christ hath 
descended out of them. They have opened down to 
the earth, and down also into that mediate world, and 
from both alike the way is now clear to the skies. 
Christ descended to the earth, and he descended alsp 
into Hades ; he rose out of it again, the first fruits" 
of all who had gone thither. Henceforth the curse 
under the Law is removable, for Christ is so revealed, 
and comes into the soul with such power and efful- 
gence, as to transform it into his own image, and roll 
olf from it the whole burden of inherited evil. Hence, 
as in Adam all die, even so those who are in Christ 



THE HADES OF CHEvISTIANITY. 



285 



shall all be made alive. The Adam of consciousness 
is excluded before the Christ of consciousness, coming- 
in with power and changing the whole man into his 
glorious likeness. Hence he raises up his own out of 
the mediate world, for all who have lived according 
to the measure of truth which was o;iven them belong; 
to him ; and he wdll raise them up at the last day. 
He comes there as well as here to resolve its peoples 
into their opposites, down among the lost or up among 
the seraphim. 

And hence, too, it will come to pass under the 
Gospel that there will be no necessity of waiting after 
death in a mediate world. Such will be the renewing^ 
and transforming efficacy, that the inherited curse 
will be cleared away from us in this life, and death 
will be an immediate transfer to the celestial abodes. 
It is not at all strange that Paul, with his new and 
wonderful experience and glowing faith, suj)posed 
this consummation was nearer at hand than it really 
was. It will come some time, as sure as Christianity 
is to accomplish its work among the nations. Indi- 
vidual and humanitary regeneration proceeds apace 
under it, and the day must dawn when the bondage 
of hereditary evil will be broken, and the saints on 
earth become so ripened for heaven that they have 
only to be unclothed of mortality to find themselves 
among the glorified. The mediate world will become 
narrower, till it dwindles to a point and disappears ; 
and then earth and heaven meet, and to step from one 
is- to stand already in the other. Xo doubt it has 
been so with many ; no doubt that, under the potent 
sway of Christianity as a renewing power, the regene- 



286 



THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



ration of thousands has been so complete, that deatli 
has transferred them from earth to heaven '^in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye.^^ Paul expected 
this for himself ; for as soon as he was " absent from 
the body,'^ he believed he should be "present w^ith 
the Lord.'' He looked upon this as the boon of 
Christ to his whole Church. And if he anticipated 
it too soon, it was because his faith was so lively that 
it made all things in the perspective to stand out and 
come near to him, and appear on one ground in the 
picture, — just as the distant and hazy landscape is 
brought near by the lens, and makes its objects 
almost touch the glass. 

Such is the Hades that lay evidently in the concep- 
tion of the Apostle, and such its place in his compre- 
hensive scheme of theology. That scheme is a plan 
in which one part fits to another with admirable con- 
sistency ; and under every variety of phrase and illus- 
tration some portion of it will be found looking out 
from almost every chapter of his Epistles. Let the 
reader peruse them carefully in the light of this ex- 
position, and we are persuaded that a system of doc- 
trine will rise and expand before his eye, not guarled 
and distorted as when it has been shaped for modern 
use, but with a symmetry both grand and beautiful, 
glowing in the light of Divine truth, and warming 
the soul with the exhalations of Divine love. 



CHAPTER IX. 



SUMMARY. 

Tpie outlines of Paul's system of Pneumatology, 
comprising his vv'liole thought on the subject of the 
resurrection, we trust have been sufficiently evolved 
in the preceding pages. The points which we have 
brought out may be summed up and set in order as 
follows : 

1. The notions of the primitive men, while domi- 
nated by the senses, respecting the state of the dead, 
were those of gross materialism. They believed there 
was an over world where God resided in space, and an 
underworld where all departed spirits were gathered 
together. The first they called Heaven, the last they 
called Hades. The Hebrew believed that the souls 
in Hades only remained there for the final judgment, 
when they would all be raised out of it, some to be 
made more happy in an upper Paradise, others to be 
remanded to a deeper place in the underworld called 
Gehenna or Hell. Hence the origin of the three 
terms, — Heaven, the place of supreme bliss; Hell, 
the place of the final woe ; and Hades, the place of 
waiting preliminary to the other two. 

2. Cliristianity makes use of the same terminology, 

287 



288 , THE P2sEUMAT0L0GY OF ST. PAUL. 



but makes it representative of a higher order of ideas. 
It makes the appearances of space the analogy where- 
with to shadow forth the things of a spiritual worhL 
Heaven is not the firmament overhead, but the con- 
dition of the redeemed after death, of which the bhie 
serene gives us the most apj^ropriate symboh Hell 
is not the lowest pit underground, but the lowest 
condition of man^s reversed and degraded faculties. 
Hades is not an intermediate place in the underworld, 
but an intermediate state in the spiritual world into 
which men pass at deatli. Thus Christianity clears 
itself of naturalism, while framing out of it a language 
to set forth its transcendent realities. 

3. In strict accordance with these ideas Paul tin- 
folds the doctrine of the resurrection. In his essential 
distinction between natural and spiritual body, he dis- 
cretes the two realms of matter and spirit, so that, 
though the natural body dies, man emerges in an im- 
mortal body, and as such enters the spiritual world. 
But he does not enter heaven, even though a descend- 
ant of Abraham. Hereditary evil was entailed on all 
the children of the first Adam, which the ceremonial 
law had no power to remove. Jew and Gentile alike 
must have passed into the mediate realm where the 
people of God wait the coming redemption. By the 
deeds of the Law no man who has ever lived can be 
justified. 

4. But Christ has appeared, and the redemption 
comes. He appeared on earth ; he died and entered 
the mediate realm, and rose out of it into heaven, the 



SUMMARY. 



289 



first fruits of them that waited in those preliminary 
abodes. And he promised a second appearing out of 
the heavens to which he has gone. 

5. What the Law could not do^ the Son of God is 
mighty to accomplish. He can remove the hereditary 
curse laid upon humanity by the first Adam^ for in 
the second Adam shall all be made alive. At the 
second coming of Christ with his angels, or the open- 
ing down of heaven to the earth and into Hades, all 
wdio belong to him will be raised up, and meet the 
Lord in the skies, and be with him for ever. Those 
who belong not to him, that is, whose inmost life is 
not in unison with his divine perfections, will be 
driven from " the presence of the Lord and the glory 
of his power and thus the second coming will bring 
on the judgment-day, and Hades will be cleared of its 
inhabitants. 

6. Those Christians who live to see that time will 
be " changed,^^ without resting in the mediate place 
of souls. The entailed curse shall cling to God's 
people no more, but under the new redemptive force 
now made available to the race, the death-realm shall 
have no power to retain the believer in Christ, and 

to be absent from the body is to be present with the 
Lord'." 

These several points are brought out in Paul's 
writings, now for one purpose and now for another, 
sometimes to confute the Jew, sometimes the Gnostic, 
and sometimes the half-believing Gentile. Whatever 

25 T 



290 



THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



heresy he finds invading the Church, he confronts it 
with that special truth adapted to bear it down. It 
is only when you gather them together that you see 
their severe logical coherence, each fitting into a com- 
prehensive plan of Christian doctrine, and harmonizing 
with the teachings of Christ, and showing that the 
ideas and the imagery that clothe them flowed into 
his mind from the same fountain of inspiration. 

In treating of the resurrection of Christ, we saw 
that the phrase in its extended signification did not 
mean merely the reanimation of the natural body on 
the third day, but the whole process through which 
Christ emerged out of earthly conditions to his place 
of power on high. The reader will be impressed with 
the close congruity betw^een the resurrection of the 
Divine Exemplar and that of all his followers, as 
illustrated in the Pauline pneumatology. As a uni- 
versal fact applicable to all mankind, the resurrection 
is the emergence of the spiritual body out of mortal 
decay into immortal existence. But applied specially 
to the people of Christ, it includes the glorious ad- 
juncts of that fact, — rising out of the mediate state, 
freed from the whole burden of evil, to complete re- 
demption with Christ on high. As a universal fact, 
it is that stage through w^hich every one must pass in 
his transit to immortality. It is the fact with those 
concomitants so auspicious and animating to the Chris- 
tian believer, that Paul treats of it in his first letter to 
the Corinthians. It is the emergence of the spiritual 
body out of mortal dissolution, and its further emer- 
gence out of the Hadean shadows, that inspires the 



SUMMARY. 



291 



exclamation of double triurapli, — O Death, where is 
tlij sting ? O Hades, where is thy victory 

Our object in the preceding pages has been accom- 
plished, if we have brought out in bold relief the 
Pauline philosophy respecting the immortal life. Jt 
has not fallen in with our plan to show how it accords 
with the universal reason, or how it is necessitated in 
the development of the well-known principles of 
human nature. We are persuaded, however, that 
after the sectarian theologies have all perished, after 
the tangles of metaphysics in which they sought to 
involve the great Apostle have been brushed away 
by time, after E-onianism and Protestantism have 
both subsided, and a universal theology, having its 
scientific basis in the indisputable facts of nature and 
psychology, shall have taken their place, his writings 
more than ever will be regarded as the utterance of a 
reason that transcends that of man and speaks to the 
ages. 

What is it to be prepared for heaven? It is to be 
entirely regenerated ; to have the last remnant of evil 
extinguished within us, and the angelic affections un- 
folded, so as to fill our whole nature, and become 
solely effusive in all our speech and actions. Entire 
regeneration has not been accomplished until all ne- 
cessity for self-denial has ceased, and the Divine Love 
has a spontaneous flow into our whole external life. 
So long as there is self-denial, there is conflict between 
the Holy Spirit working in us and our own unextin- 
guished selfishness. We are as yet in the Church 
militant, not in the Church triumphant. Our re- 



292 



THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



demption is but partial, so long as there is not perfect 
harmony between our external and internal man. 
When the external man with its passions and appe- 
tites, down to the very body which it wears, has be- 
come cleansed of evil and interfused by the Divine 
Love from wdthin so as to bend to it spontaneously 
in all its motions, all conflict ceases ; the whole nature 
is a unit, and redemption is complete. Then ''it is 
finished,^^ and, the thin veil of mortality dropping 
from around us, we should stand forth glorified. 
This is the heavenly state in its fullness, and he w^ho 
has attained to it has only to be freed of the natural 
body to find himself the companion of angels. 

None can say how many have thus attained since 
Christ hath become a new power in human redemp- 
tion. We suppose the number has been great. We 
suppose the divine w^ork has been accomplished in 
multitudes under the hard disguises of temptation 
and trial ; that for them earth and heaven have met 
with no mediate world to interspace them, and that 
the numbers will increase, and the interspace w^ill 
grow narrower, as humanitary regeneration goes on 
with cumulative power. 

Conceding all this, we cannot be blind as to the 
actual condition of the world at large. That Judaisni, 
a merely legal dispensation, had no such regenerative 
efficacy, we have not only the authority of the Apostle 
to assure us, but the Jewish character in all its mani- 
festations. That Christianity does not produce this 
result in most believers, Ave also know ; they go hence 
bearing with them abundant remnants of moral evil. 
From these postulates the inference is inevitable that 



SUMMARY. 



293 



the spiritual world must have its mediate condition, 
and the disclosures of the Bible on this subject are 
only human nature revealed in more open day. There 
are, moreover, as we have remarked already, myriads 
who die in infancy and childhood, and there are 
heathen nations in a moral state entirely analogous to 
that of childhood, who have had no truth given them 
to reject, and whose minds have not even expanded 
to the point of moral responsibility.* They have 
never had the conscience formed within them which 
the Apostle accredits to the Gentiles of his day, and 
which rendered them without excuse.'^ This tide of 
humanity sweeps on into the spirit-realm. Whither? 
If you can say at once into heaven, you utter the 
grossest solecism. If you say into hell, never hav- 
ing had a probation even, you do something worse, 
for you fly into the face of the Eternal Justice ! 

Hence the judgment scene is in the mediate world, 
and hence it becomes obvious what of necessity it must 
be. Christ comino; there as here, throuo^h the clouds 
of heaven," in other words, the Divine Truth revealed 
in unclouded splendors, vvdll open all the spiritual 
graves, and cause the dead to come forth. Those 
who have accepted him here, and whose inmost life 
has been touched and toned by his love, will hail him 
as their Friend and Deliverer. The remnants of evil 
that engirded them will be cleared away, the inward 
life, made more intense, will assume the form and body 
in complete harmony with itself; and they will rise 
to meet their Beloved in spotless robes. Those whose 

*Eead, who may, the testimony of late travelers m Southern 
Africa and Patagonia. 

25 ■» 



294 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



inmost life is corrupt and perverted, whose motive 
principles are selfish, though these have been con- 
cealed under fair moralities and godly seemings, would 
have those seemings stripped away, and the lurking 
corruption made bare, and left to take its correspond- 
ent form and manifestation ; precisely as here, when 
the truth has a nearer advent, and is brought home 
to men's business and bosoms, it resolves society into 
its opposites, and as by the touch of Ithuriel arranges 
Christ and his elect over against the Devil and his 
angels. The enunciation of Paul, therefore, is the 
voice of the prophesyings that go up from the deep 
within us. We must all stand before the judgment- 
seat of Christ, that every man may take away with 
him what was in his body, whether it be good or bad." 
And as for those in whom the spiritual degree of the 
mind had remained closed, infancy and childhood, 
and the tribes and peoples whose minds have never 
had a development above the state analogous to in- 
fancy and childhood, how obvious is it that their na- 
tures would be warmed into life, and their under- 
standings opened, and their day of choice come to 
them in the Christ revealed from heaven ! All the 
intimations which we obtain from the condition of 
men here, of the generations where they disappear 
from our sight and enter the mystic land, all the 
dictates of the enlightened reason, confirm the doc- 
trine of the primitive Church and of the New Testa- 
ment, — that with the mass of human beings the first 
state after death is neither heaven nor hell. And 
just as clear and loud are the intimations that such 
an influx of the Eternal Truth into that middle realm 



SUMMARY. 



295 



as the Scriptares clescribej such an unveiling there of 
the face of the Divine Wordj ^' the Lord Jesus de- 
scending with his mighty angels in flaming fire/^ 
such a falling into it of trumpet voices^ like drops of 
light upon the conscience^ would resolve it sj^eedily 
into heaven or hell. Therefore the mediate state is 
not the purgatory of Popery, where men suffer so 
much pain for so much venial sin ; it is the state 
where every man's real and dominant life is cleared 
of disharmonizing elements, and bodied and robed 
according to its intrinsic quality, and dra^vn by uner- 
ring affinities to its place and home. 

There is a process known familiarly to the chemist 
as crystallization, and it is produced sometimes by the 
action of the solar rays. Let the liquid mass which 
holds the particles in solution be placed in the light, 
and lucid points shoot here and there, around which 
every luciform atom arranges itself in beautiful trans- 
parencies, and is no longer a component of the residual 
mass. Even so it is when Christ touches the souls of 
his own people with light. Death dissolves our weak 
and suffering humanity, breaks up the societies and 
families of earth, and pours the individual atoms dis- 
integrated into the spirit-realm. But all whose c|uali- 
ties are luciform there move obedient to the touch of 
the solar rays, are separated from the residual portion 
and formed into gems that become radiant in the 
Eternal splendors. Thus the crystalline societies of 
heaven are arranged. Thus all which the Father 
gives to the Son shall be raised up again at the last day. 

We have not touched upon the cjuestion of the du- 



296 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



ration of the state called hell " after the separating 
judgment has taken place. It is more important, we 
think, to hold the attention awake to the solemn is- 
sues of the present scene, and the awful antagonism 
between the essentially good and essentially evil in 
human character. It lies with every one who lives 
under the noon of Gospel light, to choose which shall 
become his dominant and intrinsic life beneath these 
frail time-robes of flesh, and whether, therefore, when 
the robe falls from him, his home centre shall be down 
in tlie abysses or up among the ascending Paradises 
toward the summits of day. Happy is he whose 
progress here is such that those summits come clearly 
into his view; who passes over, while yet in the flesh, 
the interspace between earth and heaven, so that 
when death touches him, "in a moment, in the twink- 
ling of an eye,'' he changes from the man into the 
angel ! 

The object which we proposed to ourselves when 
we commenced the foregoing treatise was twofold, — 
a living apprehension of the great doctrine of Im- 
mortality, and such a practical realization of it as 
shall bring down its comforts and its monitions upon 
the humblest scene of our daily duties. Our aim lias 
been to show it clear of the superstitions which have 
been gathered around it by Church traditions, through 
which it loses its hold on reasoning minds, and by a 
rational interpretation to obtain an unclouded view of 
that spiritual world which the Gospel unveils to our 
sight. Once disclosed, how solemn, and yet how en- 
trancing, are its perspectives, and how near they come 



SUMMARY. 



297 



and open beneath the eye ! There is no death ; for 
that which seemed so was only a spectre that haunted 
the natural mind, and vanishes in the blessed dawn. 
There is no death, for the " sweet fields " are not 
" beyond the swelling flood/' but under our feet ; 
and there is no dark river that flows between. Those 
fields are only concealed by the overlay in gs of the 
material senses, and these being lifted away, we stand 
on immortal ground, from which the concealing clouds 
have vanished for ever. There is no intermediate 
state of ghostly existence, but the immortal man 
within is more than the flesh that cumbered it, and 
is eternally organized the moment the encumbrance 
disapj)ears. There is no death, therefore, but only 
the removal of deathly coverings ; the word vanishes 
from the Christian vocabulary, and the thing it repre- 
sented vanishes from the prospect of the Christian 
believer. For ourselves, we cannot raise to heaven 
a song too jubilant for this victory over the grave. 
All fear is removed springing from the fact of mere 
physical dissolution ; we put our clay statue in the 
furnace, and let it flow away to corruption, knowing, 
not that we shall receive ages hence, but that we 
possess already an indestructible statue of gold. All 
fear of mere death is removed, and that done, we can 
fix our undisturbed attention upon the only thing to 
be feared in any state of being, — the moral evil that 
glooms from within us, and clouds the landscape, and 
shuts out the smile of God. 

And when the eternal world is brought so wondrous 
near, yes, folds us in already, what department of our 
present activities, is not irradiated by it, what range 



298 THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



of ckities which it does not lift up and adorn ? What- 
ever our place, if we are doing its work well, it is the 
anteroom of heaven, and w^e are breathing in hallowed 
air. The whole space between earth and heaven we 
may pass over while yet in the material body, and so 
our souls may be among the encircling angels, w^hile 
our hands and feet move here on the errand of love. 
Happy is he wdio has thus passed on and yet remains, 
for in him the heavens and the earth have met to- 
gether, and through him the latter receives from the 
former the odors that breathe from Paradise. 

We cannot withhold our fervent congratulations at 
the auspicious results of our inquiry ; for if the reader 
has followed us with the grateful interest which w^e 
have felt in pursuing the revealed way to a serene and 
all-sufficing faith, he wall acknowledge that there is 
no greater boon which God bestows upon us than 
those sun bright convictions wdiich make the present 
and the future life meet and blend together. He will 
never despond, for the gates are ever open through 
w^hich another sun streams down upon the field of 
care. He cannot sin without an inexpressible dread 
of the nature of sin, since hell is the dismal apocalypse 
of un forsaken evil in man, and to cherish it now is to 
lay up the material whence its hideous imagery is 
sure to be unrolled. He cannot sorrow without hope, 
for the faith which brings the future near, and shows 
to us the friends who rose at the burial hour to walk 
in light, is a faith which makes hope elastic and gay. 
He cannot live without lifting every day a hymn of 
praise for that existence whose line stretches un- 
broken throuo;h the endless avenues and the mellow^- 



SUMMARY. 



299 



iug radiance of the city of God. And he cannot lie 
down to the last agony without feeling the strength 
that gives him wings to rise above it, and pronounce 
with the last motion of his lips a cheerful o^ood-nio^ht 

J. DO 

to the world. 



4 



PART IV. 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



" Now we say that the Symphony of all the Pagan theologers 
was their agreement in these two fundamentals expressed by Plu- 
tarch, — namely, the worshiping of one Supreme and universal 
Numen, Eeason, and Providence, governing all things, and then 
of his subservient ministers, the instruments of Providence ap- 
pointed by him over all parts of the world ; who being honored 
under several names and with different rites and ceremonies ac- 
cording to the laws of the respective countries, caused all that 
diversity of religion that was amongst them." — Cudworth. 
302 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

In the preceding chapters we liave confined onr 
attention to the subject of the immortal life, as we find 
that life unveiled and illustrated in the Christian 
Revelation. But the Christian Revelation would be 
without meaning except as addressed to minds ready 
to respond to it and with some preconceptions con- 
cerning it. The Jewish and Christian Scriptures 
even at this day are in possession of only one-fifth 
of the human race. The question cannot fail to oc- 
cur to the reader, If the disclosures of a future life 
are of such vast importance in the plan of human 
redemption and salvation, why are they confined to a 
few favored people or only to a single race ? If Chris- 
tianity is light from heaven, and not like other re- 
ligions the guessing or the groping of fallible men, 
why was not its light given before ; or why was not 
its light, like the light of nature, bestowed simul- 
taneously upon all peoples and lands? These are 
questions at which a great many persons have faltered 
and stumbled ; and they have been tempted to place 
Christianity among the superstitions of the world, 
like them to be sifted and in the main set aside, while 
we wait for some new verdict of the Reason, or some 
new speculation touching the origin and destiny of 
man. 

303 



304 



THE SYMPHOXY OF RELIGIONS. 



What the other religions which have figured largely 
in history would yield to us when fairly analyzed, and 
whether we should find that the Universal Father had 
deserted four-fifths of his children that the one-fifth 
might receive his entire attention and guidance/ are 
topics of exceeding interest. If Christianity comes 
not in arbitrarily in the world's progress, but comes 
in the grand order of universal education and develop- 
ment, then the study of other religions will show it ; 
and the disclosures which Christianity brings to us of 
the immortal life will be the lifting of a veil which 
before was semitransparent, and only so in order to 
protect the minds of men from the glare which, too 
suddenly made, might not comfort and save, but only 
blind and dazzle. That being so, the Christian doc- 
trine gives the For egl cams of those realities whereof 
the other great religions were the Foreshadows. 

We propose, therefore, in the following pages to sup- 
plement the argument from the Christian Revelation 
by an inquiry into the teachings of other religions 
touching the great theme which we have had under 
discussion. If man is intrinsically immortal, having 
relations to a spirit-world as well as the natural, then 
undoubtedly we shall find that according to his de- 
velopment and culture a spirit- world has been imaged 
in his nature and consciousness. To what extent this 
has been done, and how the revealings of other re- 
ligions comj^are with those of the Christian, are ques- 
tions which open an important chapter in the science 
of comparative Theology and Pneumatology. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE ARYAN PEOPLE. 

It has been too much the policy of Christian apolo- 
gists to make all possible contrasts and antagonisms 
between Christianity and the other religions of the 
world — as if Christianity could be thus honored 
and exalted as showing God shut in among the elect 
few, and not in the spiritual world, as in the natural, 
dispensing his mercies freely and diffusively as the 
sunshine and the rain. 

Christianity contrasts with other religions as the 
twilight contrasts with the sunrise. The dispensa- 
tion of the Logos as the all-revealing Word, is 
one and universal. This is not only the doctrine 
of the New Testament, but of the most devout of 
its early expounders. " One article of our faith,'' 
says Justin, ^^is that Christ is the first begotten of 
God ; the very Logos of which mankind are all par- 
takers, and therefore those who live according to the 
Logos are Christians." " God," says Clement of 
Alexandria, "is the cause of all that is good. And 
of some good gifts He is the primary cause, as the Old 
and New Testaments ; of others the secondary, as of 
philosophy. But even philosophy may have been 
given primarily by him to the Greeks also; for 
philosophy, like a schoolmaster, has guided the Greeks, 
even as the Law did Israel toward Christ. Philoso- 

26 « ♦ U 305 



306 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



pliy, therefore^ prepares and opens the way to those 
who, by Christ, go on to perfection." Origen is even 
more grandly comprehensive. 

These fathers were of the Alexandrian school of 
theology, which made John's Gospel the central light 
of all the Divine Revelations, and they never tired 
of bathing their minds in its catholic spirit. Pre- 
eminently, as we think, they represent the theology 
of the early Church, both in its profundity and com- 
prehension. 

The great religions of the world have interior re- 
lations and features which show sometimes a striking 
family resemblance. Viewed not in their errors and 
superstitions, vv^hich are transient, but in their essen- 
tial truths, which are eternal, they tend to their fulfill- 
ment in a religion w^iich is absolute and universal ; 
and they show us humanity in its long procession of 
generations wending its way upw^ard, like the travel- 
ers in the Purgatory of Dante climbing the hill on 
the spiral road which ends in the flowery summit of 
Paradise. Some are at the foot of the hill in the 
gross superstitions of feticism, but others are in sight 
of the summit and so near to Christianity that they 
are almost ready to be taken up and transfused in its 
resolving power. 

The religion which we receive by inheritance is that 
of the Semitic race, Hebraism being its root and 
stem, Christianity its consummate flower and fruitage. 
But there is another race more wide -spread than the 
Semitic, and which has figured more largely in his- 
tory — the Aryan. They too, like the Semitic, have 
had their seers, their prophets, and their revelations. 



THE AEYAN PEOPLE. 



307 



Their religions have educated and ennobled some of 
the best specimens of human nature^ and exhibited 
some of the most shining examples of virtue and 
piety. Many who have defended Christianity, select- 
ing only what is false and corrupt in those religions, 
have assumed that their prophets were impostors, and 
their miraculous works but legendary lies. As if hu- 
man nature were so constituted that it could feed only 
on corruption and falsehood, and thence grow into 
forms of intellectual strength and moral beauty which 
often fling shame upon our low Christian attainment ! 
As if the God of Christianity could be honored by 
showing that he had abandoned the greater part of 
his children to neglect and orphanage I We shall 
show, we trust, that revelations of other religions are 
both genuine and authentic ; that so far from bring- 
ing discredit on Christianity, they make its claims 
more manifest, are a new mine of evidence for its 
absolute truth as fulfilling the deepest prophesyings 
of the universal heart of man. Other religions may 
have disclosures of the spiritual world as honestly 
made as those of our own ; they may have miracles not 
less genuine, so far forth as miracle is the operation of 
spiritual laws within natural ones, and holding them 
in subordination as the lower to the higher. But we 
shall find this distinction between the Aryan and 
Semitic religions, — that while the former are from a 
spirit-world proximate to the natural, and therefore 
liable to be infested with its fallacies, the latter are 
from a spirit-world far above nature, beyond the in- 
fluence of its fallacies, and circling more immediately 
the throne of the Highest. 



308 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOXS. 



Let the reader east his eye over the map of Central 
Asia and trace the land stretching eastward from the 
Caspian Sea over high mountain plains^ known in the 
older geographies as ancient Bactriana, and he will 
find the seat of the Aryan race, so far back as history 
lias been able to trace it. They were a semi-civilized 
people, living not in tents but houses, leading an agri- 
cultural life, long before Moses led the children of 
Israel out of Egypt, long before Abraham entered the 
land of Canaan from Mesopotamia. The Xature 
which there surrounded them beamed upon them in 
her benign aspects or gloomed upon them in her most 
destructive forces. Their teachers were the Sun and 
the Stars, Day and Xight with their changes. Summer 
and AViuter, Light and Darkness, Sunshine and Storm. 
These aspects of nature they soon personified, and the 
personifications became the gods which they feared 
and worshiped. They spoke a language which be- 
came the mother tono;ue of a laro;e familv of Ian- 
guages, most of them of marvelous compass, flexi- 
bility and musical flow. From these pastoral people 
on their lofty seats, went forth at least seven streams 
of migration west and south, bearing with them a 
common lano;uao;e and a common relio:ion ; the Ian- 
guage and the religion of course to be enriched 
and developed by new culture in the new climes 
where the streams diverged on their distant way. 
These seven streams were the Celtic, the Teutonic 
and the Slavic, — the three oldest that separated, 
going north and west past the Ural Mountains, and 
spreading successively over Xorthern and Western 
Europe; the Hindoo, which crossed over the Him- 



THE ARYAN PEOPLE. 



309 



alaya into India; the Persian, which went southward 
through Media and possessed the beautiful land of 
Iran; the Hellenic, which went south over the Cau- 
casus, crossed the Hellespont and descended into 
Greece ; and the Latin, which kept on farther west 
and entered Italy. How do we know all this? 
Solely but surely by the science of comparative phi- 
lology, which traces the languages of all these peoples 
to one. parent language as surely as the river is traced 
to its tributary streams. This is the achievement of 
German scholarship, which makes philology do the 
work of history where history had shaded off into 
myth and fable. The Sanscrit, the Zend, the Greek, 
the Latin, the Slavonic, the Teutonic, including our 
own English, are sister languages, with so large a 
proportion of common words that they show indu- 
bitably a common parentage. 

These peoples on their different lines of migration 
have originated the most brilliant civilizations the 
world has ever known. Their religions in some of 
their developments have inspired the selectest works 
of literature and art, and wrought in human nature 
some of its fondest hopes and deepest aspirations. 
What those religions are in their heart and essence, 
becomes a question of vast interest to the Christian 
believer. If in the course of human progress these 
religions show only a continuous divergence from 
each other, they would indicate that religion is a 
human invention, a superstition of man's crude be- 
ginnings answering to no eternal and objective reali- 
ties. If on the other hand they show in their higher 
development a continuous convergence, they would in- 



310 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIONS. 



clicate that thoii,^h the word of God in human nature 
may divide into diverse languages, yet the languages 
are always cognate, and are not the inventions of men, 
but the voice of the Lord sw^eeping the chords of our 
humanity ; and if the convergence is ever toward Chris- 
tianity like tributary streams, then the volume of evi- 
dence swells irresistibly that Christianity is the Word 
made flesh in fulfillment of the desire of nations. 



CHAPTER II L 



THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS.* 

Beginning farthest east, the first stream of the 
Aryan migrations that meets us, though not first in 
the order of time, is the one which crossed over the 
Himalaya into the Punjab or Northern India and 
spread thence over the entire peninsula of Hindustan. 
We find the Aryans in the Punjab near the fountains 
of the Indus and the Ganges from thirteen to fifteen 
hundred years before Christ, and then with a culture 
and a literature which show that it must have been 
centuries since they first left their native seats on the 
lofty plains of Bactriana. There in the Punjab they 

* The principal authorities consulted in writing the following 
chapters are Wiittke, Geschichte des Heidenthums in Beziehung 
auf Eeligion, specially Geistesleben der Indier ; Biinsen, Gott in 
Geschicht ; Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. ; 
Hardwicke, Christ and other Masters; Eitter's Ancient Philoso- 
phy; Grote's Plato; Curtius' Greece, vol. i. ; De Pressense, Ee- 
ligions before Christ; Cudworth, Intellectual System with Mo- 
sheim's notes. These chapters were written before Dr. J. F. Clarke's 
admirable work was published, "Ten Great Eeligions," but I 
have made some alterations and corrections suggested by a com- 
parison of the results I had arrived at with those which he has given 
with more fullness and detail. Dorner's earlier treatise, which 
sketches the course of the Eastern religions, and Baur's Dreiei- 
nigkeit, specially the first hundred pages, are exceedingly valuable 
and suggestive as showing the relations of the principal ante-Chris- 
tian Eeligions to Christianity itself. 

311 



312 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



sang their songs of worship to the gods of nature, and 
gave birth to the oldest literature extant — the San- 
scrit — unless the Hebrew be older, of which we are 
by no means assured. The Vedas, their sacred books, 
are still preserved to us. They contain much that is 
puerile, a great deal that is beautiful, and some that 
is kindred in spirit with the Psalms of David. The 
Dawn, the Sunlight, Fire, the Blue Arch, the Waters, 
the Thunder-storm and the Darkness, become dif- 
ferent Divinities the objects of their hymns and offer- 
ings. They have proper names. Varuna is the 
Heaven, Agni is fire, Ushas the dawn, Maruts the 
storms, Nadi the rivers, Indra the thunder-flash and 
Surya the god of day. The generic name, however, 
for all the beneficent deities is Deva, w^hich means 
something bright. The mythology throughout is in 
a fluid state. Sometimes one of these gods is put in 
the place of a Supreme Deity, more especially Indra 
or Varuna, and there are traces of a vague monotheism. 
Some suppose that this is a vanishing remnant of a 
monotheism which they brought down from Bactriana. 
However this may be, the idea of On^ Supreme strug- 
gles to find utterance through their highest inspira- 
tions, and it is 'a question still unsolved to what extent 
the expressions used by the Rig Veda poets were passing 
metaphors representing different phases of One Su- 
preme Divinity, vaguely apprehended but everywhere 
phenomenalized in the changing aspects of nature. 

Long before David wrote the one hundred and 
thirty-ninth Psalm the Vedic hymns sang of a divine 
omniscience and omnipresence, of Varuna the Heav- 
enly who overlooks the world with a thousand eyes. 



RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 313 



who sees what is between heaven and earth, and what 
is beyond, who has counted the twinklings of the eyes 
of men, whose fatal net catches the man who tells a 
lie, who w^hen two people are sitting together always 
makes the third and hears their whisperings, and 
who would still be with us should we flee beyond the 
stars. But what is to our special purpose, they 
sing too of the immortal life with a more distinct 
articulation than the Hebrew poets and prophets ever 
did. Their funeral rites were beautiful and impress- 
ive and full of joyous hope that dispelled the gloom 
of death. On the funeral pile of the deceased his 
widow and his bow were placed, the bow to be taken 
down and broken, the widow to be led down by her 
servant or foster-son with the stirring song — 

" Eise up, O woman, to the world of life ;" f 

and when the Priest lit the funeral pile, he addressed 
the spirit of the dead in a farewell song of immortality. 

"Depart, depart, along those ancient paths 
By which our fathers have gone home to rest ; 
The god Varuna shalt thou now behold. 
Go to thy fathers, sojourn there with Yama,J 

* " King Varuna sees what is between heaven and earth and 
what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of the eyes of men. 
As a player throws the dice he settles all things." See the whole 
hymn translated in Max Miiller's " Chips," i. 41. This hymn, 
however, is not from the Eig Veda, but from the Atharva Veda, 
wliich is later. 

t The translations from the Vedas here given, and from Hesiod 
and Pindar in the following pages, are copied from the London 
edition of Biinsen's "God in History," translated by Susanna 
Wink worth. 

X Yama was the Adam of the Aryan people, fhe common pro- 
27 



314 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIONS. 



In highest heaven, fit meed of thy deserts : 
Leave there all evil, then go home once more, 
And take a form of heavenly glory bright." 

And tlie body as it consumed was dismissed to its 
native Earth in a strain tender as an infant's lullaby 
at evening. 

'' Go to thy loving mother home to Earth ; 
With wide-spread arms and blessing-bringing hands 
She takes the pious to her kindly breast 
As 'twere a maiden's bosom soft as wool, 
And holds thee safe from danger's threatening edge. 
Open thy arms, O Earth, do him no harm ; 
Receive him gently with a loving kiss, 
And wrap him round, O Earth, as when a babe 
His mother in her garments holds to rest." 

We find moreover in tbe Vedas the evidence of a 
trembling consciousness of sin^ cries for mercy and 
breathings to heaven for forgiveness. If I go along 
trembling like a cloud driven by the wind, have 
mercy, almighty, have mercy. Through want of 
strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone 
wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy.'' Then 
there are alternations of doubt as to the divine exist- 
ence itself, as if a fear haunted the worshiper that 
he may be praying into vacancy. But faith, though 
indeterminate, prevails over doubt. Along with iai- 
mortality there is an intuitive forecast of a retribu- 
tion after death, of a pit of darkness into which the 
false and the lawless are hurled for their trans- 
gressions. 

genitor on Earth and the father of his race in heaven, where he still 
holds patriarchal sway. 



KELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 315 



But with all their truth and beauty, the religion of 
the Vedas drifts toward dualism. It never rises to 
a clear and pronounced monotheism, to a conception 
of one Supreme who subordinates all nature and 
holds it in the mouldings of his hand. The benefi- 
cent divinities are set over against the malignant de- 
mons. Siirya the god of Light, who comes royally 
over the mountains and bathes the world in his be- 
nign glories, is sure to be followed by the darkness, 
personified and at length hypostatized as the giant 
Serpent creeping after Indra and blotting out the sun. 
The powers of good and the powers of evil divide 
nature between them, each struggling for undisputed 
supremacy, but never obtaining it. They dominated 
the worshipers contrariwise through the aspects of 
nature by their smiles of mercy or frowns of anger. 
As yet, however, he sees the conflict not as spiritual 
but only natural, not in the soul within him but in 
the world around and above him. He sees it in the 
sky after the analogies of his own agricultural affairs. 
The clouds that drift over the sky are cows feeding in 
celestial pastures and distilling from their udders the 
milk that enriches the earth. When the clouds dis- 
appear below the horizon and the ground becomes 
dry and the grass withers, the robber demons have 
carried off the cows and hidden them in caves near 
the uttermost ends of the sky. The benign deities 
are invoked, Indra hurls his thunderbolt, discomfits 
the robbers and releases the cows, that come lowing 
froni their caves; the Maruts ride up the sky and 
bring the cows back to their pastures. The conflict 
depicted as yet on the canvas of nature was sure to 



316 



THE STMPIIONY OF RELIGIONS. 



move inward at length and divide the soul against 
itself in the great war between good and evil. 

The cognate religions of India, of Persia and of 
Greece are in their most important characteristics the 
history of the human mind in its long and desperate 
struggle to free itself from the gripe of this dualism 
and place nature and man in harmonic relations with 
each other, and both in harmonic relations with the 
Creator. 

The Indo- Aryans, as we have said, took possession 
of the whole peninsula. They drove the natives be- 
fore them and reduced them to slavery ; and then, 
shut in to themselves among the soft influences of 
nature, whose riches and magnificence in these sunny 
climes were in striking contrast with the cold regions 
of the mountain plains they had left behind, they 
gave themselves to introversion and contemplation. 
They passed out of the childhood of the Vedic period. 
They undertook to solve the problems which the Yedic 
religion presented ; to meet the questions which it had 
raised without answering. Brahminism arose, a sys- 
tem of doctrine and metaphysics interpreting the Ve- 
das and supplementing them with piles of commen- 
tary. What the Talmud is to the Old Testament, 
what decrees of councils and endless bodies of Divin- 
ity are to the Christian Scriptures, such were the Upan- 
ishads and the Laws of Menu to the Vedas. The 
Brahmanic literature, however, includes not metaphys- 
ics merely in dry skeleton form, but with the coverings 
of flesh and blood warm with the inspirations of the 
highest poetry. Two of the great poems which the 
world will not let die are creations of Brahminism. 



RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 317 

Its literature is rich and luxuriant as the magnificent 
flora of India. 

The antagonism between the dark and the bright 
aspects of nature found in the Vedic religion no 
longer continues because nature ceases to be. The 
whole visible world is unreal and spectral. Man him- 
self is a spectre as pertains to his personal identity, 
for he exists only in Brahm of whom he is a part, 
and in whom his apparent personality is finally to 
submerge like a bubble breaking into its native sea. 
It may come out again as a bubble somewhere else, 
but it is only the froth upon the wave whose refluent 
motion bears it back to the bosom of the deep. The 
metempsychosis now appears for the first time. It is 
not found in the Vedas, but it is the process by which 
Brahminism by successive births and deaths evolves 
all personal and finite existences, which are illusive 
and apparent only, from the infinite ocean of being ; 
and then sucks them in and involves them in its ever- 
lasting tides. This all-devouring pantheism abolishes 
both man and nature. God only is, and so the Vedic 
dualism exists no longer. 

But though all personal and finite existence is de- 
clared to be unreal and spectral, no writings depict 
more vividly than the Brahm inic the life after death 
with its terrible retributions or its celestial rewards. 
The heavens are many and the hells many. When a 
man dies, if his merits overbalance his demerits, and 
if the sins of all his pre-existent states have been 
atoned for in the long round of metaphysics, he is 
born as a superior being in one of the heavens, and 
he will continue to have higher births into higher 



318 



THE SYMPHOXY OF RELIGIOXS. 



heavens until bis existence merges in the infinite 
whence it was evolved. Or if he is born again into 
earthly conditions, those conditions will be happy and 
propitious. He will be born a sage, a prince or a 
king. But however and wherever born, his way is 
now upward toward the supreme bliss which is the 
final extinction of this illusory personal existence, be- 
ing lost in Brahm as the water-drop is lost in the sea. 
On the other hand, if a man's demerits turn the scale 
against him, he sinks downward into the hells, to go 
through the round of demon-births and deaths, or to 
be born into this w^orld again as a slave or a beggar, 
or it may be a beast, a reptile or a worm. He must 
go through these miserable transmigrations till all his 
sins are canceled ere he can take the ascending way 
continuously and be lost in Brahm. 

Brah minis m hardened into an ecclesiasticism so 
unrelenting that humanity was crushed in its merci- 
less coils. It grasped all the functions of civil, social 
and domestic life, and held them under the tyranny 
of canon law. It split society into four castes and 
held them apart by horizontal lines that never could 
be passed over; the priests being at the head, the 
enslaved natives at the foot, with the social pyramid 
pressing them into the dust. Eating, drinking, sleep- 
ing, praying, thinking, speaking, washing, dressing, 
sitting, walking, dying, were under the direction of 
priestly rules, with endless purifications and atone- 
ments. The beautiful funeral rites described in the 
Vedas were petrified into horrible forms. The widow, 
instead of being led down from the funeral pyre and 
remanded to life with songs of cheer and consola- 



RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 319 

tion, was doomed to remain there and consume in its 
fires. Never was there a more priest-ridden country 
than India for more than a thousand years. 

Of course a religion which gave birth to so bril- 
liant a civilization and inspired a literature of such 
wealth and exuberance, had its place and mission in 
the progress of the race. If it did not abolish suf- 
feringj it taught men to despise it as belonging to 
the realm of illusion, or to bear it with patience as 
canceling the sins of an unremembered past. Its 
metempsychosis brought the animal kingdom within 
the sphere of the human, and made cruelty to brutes 
an unpardonable crime. In its degree and within its 
own restriction it enforced the charities of life. It 
had powerful motives to virtue. Born into base mate- 
rial bodies and liable to go the rounds of transmigra- 
tion, the great problem was how to shorten the process. 
This could be done first by ritual, by prayers, by 
repeating sacred texts and by merciful regard for all 
sentient creatures ; secondly, by the gnosis which ap- 
plied only to the learned class, the Brahmins. He 
who knows the supreme God,'^ said they, becomes 
God.^' Thus he merges again in the Highest. More- 
over the great truth, the immanence of God in man 
and nature as their sole ground of reality_,was brought 
forth and held secure though lacking other great 
truths to give it rounding and healthful proportions. 
Braliminism could not regenerate society nor secure its 
progress. Like the Church despotism of the medise- 
vel ages, it could only hold society in arrest till the 
time came for its hard despotism to be thrown off or 
broken in pieces. 



320 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



The time came and the man arose in the Providence 
of God — one of the great prophets that the ages date 
from. Sakya Gautama, called afterward the illu- 
mined^ was born not far from the year 550 B. C. He 
was tlie son of a king whose kingdom extended from 
the foot of the Napal mountains in Northern India. 
He belonged to the warrior caste, and was a youth of 
rare beauty and accomplishment. Despising the fri- 
volities, the sports and the pleasures which engaged 
the boyhood of his companions, he retired within him- 
self, and gave up his mind to a contemplation of the 
highest themes. He would retire into the stillness of 
the forest and there revolve the great mystery of life 
which sorely troubled him. His friends tried to draw 
him away from these pensive meditations, and to this 
end they advised him to marry. He took seven days 
to deliberate, and finally consented, taking care that 
this should not interrupt the course of his studies. 
Wealth, power, pleasure, royal honors, were all his if 
he chose to accept them. But riding out of the city 
to his parks or his gardens, he saw an old man bent 
down with infirmity groping with his stick, poor, 
miserable and deserted. He saw another by the way- 
side covered with filth and dying of painful disease. 
He saw a corpse with friends around it rending the 
air with their wailing. Drive back," he said to his 
coachman ; " what are parks and pleasure gardens to 
me, while age, disease and death lay upon men these 
burdens of woe? I must think how to accomplish 
their deliverance.'^ 

Such was the problem that haunted and tormented 
him. To find the way to its solution, he joined the 



RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 321 

school of a clistiDguislied Bralimiu who had drawn 
around him three hundred pupils. He soon left in 
disappoiutment. He went to another who had seven 
hundred pupils, and of course was disappointed again. 
He withdrew with five others, who together gave 
themselves up for six years to solitude, to severe pen- 
ances and macerations. At the end of this time he 
came to the conclusion that asceticism was not the way 
of truth, but a temptation and a snare. His five 
companions here parted from him, and he was left 
again to himself. Then came the knowledge which 
had been sought so long, and it came by revelation. 
The outer world of sense was taken from him, its 
bemldering lights were "blown out^^ and an inner 
and higher world swam into his ken, and stood before 
his hushed spirit and peaceful vision. The lines of 
caste melted away and disappeared, and humanity 
was represented to him in its oneness and solidarity, 
and, as in Peter's vision, nothing pertaining to it could 
be common or unclean. From his serene heights of 
illumination he came back to his normal consciousness 
radiant with these two great truths — the equal brother- 
hood of mankind, and the entire dying to self, the 
sole condition of eternal rest. From this time forth 
Sakya takes the name of the Buddha, the illumined. 

German expounders of Buddhism pass lightly over 
these " ecstatic visions,'^ or leave them out altogether 
as morbid conditions without significance, not knowing 
evidently what to make of them. If they had known, 
they would have known much better what to make 
of the Nirvana, the blowing out of the natural con- 
sciousness which is the chief mystery in the religion 

V 



322 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



of Buddha, Very strange it is that from morbid 
conditions two of the great truths of universal relig- 
ion which tlie most acute philosophers and metaphy- 
sicians had missed of; received their first inaugura- 
tion ; which anticipated some of the most heavenly 
teachings of Christianity by five hundred years, and 
which have spoken to the condition of three hundred 
millions of the human race and soothed their suifer- 
ings as a balm of Gilead. 

Buddha after his illumination repaired to Benares 
and became the prophet of a new religion. Wealth, 
honor, station and sensuous pleasures he cast behind 
him, renouncing them all, and with a heart overflow- 
ing with brotherly love toward all mankind he lived 
a life of entire consecration to the cause of humanity. 
His ethical code is so pure that we pause in reading 
and ask ourselves whether we have not made a mis- 
take and are reading, not Buddha's aphorisms, but the 
Sermon on the Mount. His precepts re-enact the 
most essential of the ten commandments, and his rules 
of life anticipate the Beatitudes of Jesus. Thou shalt 
not kill. Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not commit 
any unchaste act. Thou shalt not lie, Thou shalt not 
drink anything that intoxicates, are the command- 
ments which make up the Pentalogue of Buddha. 
The first commandment not only forbids the murder 
of any human being, but of any sentient creature that 
lives. The sermon from his mount of illumination 
enjoins not only purity of person, but of heart, mind, 
speech and manners. It enjoins kindness and gentle- 
ness toward animals ; mildness and long-sufPering 
>-oward those who smite us and torment us; entire 



EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 323 



renunciation of self-love ; freedom from lust, hatred, 
pride and hypocrisy; patience and forbearance under 
injuries ; that we utter no harsh word, but under all 
temptation that we remain " chaste as the moon/' and 

under all provocation maintain a spirit which noth- 
ing can ruffle." He who thus overcomes the wwld 
enters the eternal rest. Such was the moral code of 
Buddha. With very little change of phraseology, we 
should find ourselves repeating the precepts of Jesus, 
or Paul's description of the regenerate life, in which 

the old man w^hich is corrupt according to deceitful 
lusts" is put off, and ^^the new man is put on, created 
in righteousness and true holiness." 

The word of this great prophet spake to the mil- 
lions as no word had spoken before. It annulled the 
ritual of Brahminism. Justification by the dead 
works of its law was repudiated, and justification by 
faith in humanity and by self-renunciation was a new 
gospel for the race. It spread over Eastern and South- 
ern Asia and the islands of the sea, welcomed as it 
was among the crushed and despairing multitudes who 
rejoiced in the abolition of caste, and found a newly 
awakened sense of the equal brotherhood of mankind. 
It is the faith of one-third of the human race to- 
day. 

Two very grave objections are urged against the 
religion of Buddha. It is charged with nihilism and 
atheism. It denies the immortality of man and the 
existence of God. The Nirvana, which literally 
means "blowing out," as the extinguishment of a 
candle, is understood to assert total annihilation as the 
supreme good. It is a quite sufficient answer to such 



324 



THE 5Y3IPHOXY OF EELIGI0X5, 



an interpretation, that the Nirvana to Tvhich Buddha 
aspired he held to be attainable before death ; nay, 
that he had attained it himself, and taught from the 
serene heights of its realization. Plainly he means 
the extinguishment of all selfish desire and passion, 
A^diat Paul calls the carnal man with his lusts ; dying 
unto self, that the higher life, with its itnAuctuatino; 
peace and cloudless horizon, might succeed to it. In 
his own case it involved the hushing to sleep of the 
bodily senses, that an inner and higher sense might 
open to a vision of supernal things. Hence, in his 
Brahmana proverbs he calls that man blest who has 
discovered both shores — this one and that which lies 
on the other side," because, fi^oni him do all fetters 
fall off that once held his mind in bondage.'' This is 
not annihilation, but the da^vning glory of immor- 
tality. That the metaphysicians who tried to expound 
his doctrines shotild think that if the natural life of a 
man were blown out there would be nothing left of 
him, is not surprising. Some of his own followers and 
commentators did so. Btit it is inexcusaljle in any 
Christian interpreter to follow them. AYe do not im- 
agine that Buddha held the Xirvana to involve of 
necessity the ecstatic vision,'* but the whole drift of 
his teachings best authenticated shows that he regarded 
it as the crucifying of self, with all its carnal concti- 
piscence, and the going out of its bewildering lights, 
that the true rest, with its guiding light, might come 
in — precisely the consummation described in one of 
otir Christian hymns : 

I ?aw on Eanli ancther light 
Tlian itiat "^vliich lit mine eye, 



RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 325 



Come forth as from a world within 
And from a higher sky. 

" Its beams still shone unclouded on, 
When in the distant West, 
The sun I once had known had sunk 
For ever to his rest." 

Blinsen, who is entirely successful in defending 
Buddha against the charge of Nihilism^ fails when he 
comes to the charge of Atheism. His citations prove 
nothing. Buddha however was not an Antitheist. It 
were morally impossible for such a man to deny the 
Divine existence. Atheism is not Antitheism. To 
be without God is not of necessity to deny him. 
Buddha's system does not affirm the great central 
truth of the Divine Personality. It simply leaves a 
blank where in Christianity, that great truth, comes in 
and organizes all other truths around it. Buddha was 
so much concerned in alleviating the woes of this mor- 
tal life that all his teachings were moral and practical, 
and his thought never soared to the central doctrine 
of all religion. Moreover, though he grasps the truth 
of a future life and has openings into its realities and 
its abiding peace, he teaches little concerning its nature 
and his religion had no pneumatology. His Mrvana 
affirms the fact of eternal rest as the reward of self-re- 
nunciation, but it leaves a painful chasm as pertains 
to God and a spiritual world. His morality is so 
much like that of Christianity, that the rules and pre- 
cepts of one religion might be exchanged for those of 
the other without leaving any sense of incompleteness; 
for the absolute morality is the same in all climes and 

28 



326 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOXS. 



ages. But the morality of Buddha lacks the inspiring 
energy which should give it aggressive and conquering 
power. After self has been subdued and made quies- 
cent it still lacks that Divine incoming which, tak- 
ing the place of self, unfolds a loftier manhood and 
one which wields mightily the sword of the Spirit 
in cleaving down the sins and evils of the world. 
Buddhism therefore could never be a finality, but was 
rather a deep-drawn sigh of human nature toward the 
Word made Flesh — toward that Divine advent which 
gives inspiration to virtue, and which lights up both 
the spirit-world and the natural with the glories of 
the Godhead. It is a preparation and a waiting for 
the coming that should fill its painful void with the 
consciousness of the Divine presence and inworking, 
which give the crowning perfection of human na- 
ture. 

Till this want is su^^plied it is plain to see how the 
chasm would be impleted by the followers of Buddha. 
No people ever lived long in a religion of Atheism. 
Buddha himself w^as put by his followers in the next 
age into the place of God, and out of the' vast inane 
emerged Paradise, with Buddha in the midst of it, and 
this becomes the immortality which his disciples aspire 
to. Moreover, Buddha saw nature and the natural life 
in deadly antagonism to the spirit even as Paul did ; 
but his self-renunciation, unlike that of Paul, ran 
surely into asceticism, into withdrawment from the 
world in selfish seclusion. Hence, Buddhism to-day 
has its monks, its monasteries, its ritual of saint- 
worship, resembling so much that of the Romish 
Church that Jesuit missionaries thought the devil 



EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HINDUS. 327 

must have coutriv^ed it as a specious imitation of the 
true religion. Where heartily embraced and prac- 
ticed, so sweet and pure is its moralism, it is capable 
of ])roducing a delicious quietism, the hush of all the 
passions, amiable and gentle manners ; and it can not 
only remove all fear of death, but even produce a de- 
sire for it as the process through which all that is 
natural wanes and all its turbulence ceases, and Nir- 
vana, the eternal rest, comes on. Rest, in distinction 
from activity, with its pains, fatigues and vexations, is 
the prevailing element in the Paradise of Buddha. 
His religion is not a tonic, but a narcotic to soothe 
the spirit into repose and take the sense of suffering 
out of it. Brahminism abolishes nature and is lost 
in God. Buddhism leaves out God and opposes 
nature with asceticism and self-renunciation. One is 
all centre ; the other is all circumference. The Light 
was yet to come, revealing God as both centre and cir- 
cumference, both First and Last, Beginning and Ul- 
timation. 

No words could be more finely and fitly spoken 
than these in which Bun sen sums up the last results 
of the religion of Buddha : Looking at its general 
bearing on the world's history, Buddhism may be re- 
garded as a sort of repose of humanity after its deliv- 
erance from the heavy yoke of Brahminism and the 
wild orgies of nature-worship. But this repose is 
that of a weary wanderer, who is withheld from the 
prosecution of God's work on this earth by his utter 
despair of the triumph of justice and truth in actual 
life, especially in the sphere of the State. In the plan 
of the world's order it seems even now producing the 



328 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOXS. 



effect of a mild close of opium on the raving or de- 
spairing tribes of weary-hearted Asia. The sleep lasts 
long, bnt it is a gentle one, and who knows how near 
maj be the dawn of the resurrection morning?" ^ 
* God in Histoiy, i., pp. 374^ 375. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE PERSIAN RELIGIOUS COIsSCIOUSNESS, 

The modern traveler who visits Western India, 
and especially the island of Bombay and the neigh- 
boring city of Suratj now under the sway of the Eng- 
lish government, very soon notices a class of men dis- 
tinguished by their frank and noble bearing and their 
uniformity of costume, unlike that of the Orientals 
generally. They have tall, well-developed frames, 
are models of manly strength, have faces that beam 
with unwonted intelligence and manners inspired 
with dignified courtesy, without the insolence of the 
Moslem and without the servility of the native Hin- 
du. On further inquiry he finds that the moral 
qualities of these people answer to their physical 
aspect. They are men of thrift and enterprise, many 
of them merchants of unfailing probity, though of rare 
shrewdness and skill. He finds that a large share of 
the wealth of the communities where they live is in 
their hands, and that, while it is acquired with saga- 
city and probity, it is lavished with enlightened gener- 
osity. They are the pioneers in every Avorthy enter- 
prise ; they build ships, railroads, bridges and canals ; 
they found schools and send their children to them ; 
they promote the interests of agriculture and of all 
beneficent industries ; their charities are widely dif- 

2S* 329 



330 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIOXS. 



fused, irrespective of race or sect; and the progress 
and prosperity of society depend mainly on their in- 
telligence and enterprise. In Bombay alone they 
number over one hundred and ten thousand. They 
are staunch friends of the English, and love to ac- 
quire their language. They are found not only in 
Western India, but in those seaports of China which 
are open to trade with Europeans. Though they do 
not number at this day in all more than one hundred 
and fifty thousand souls, it is evident that they will 
constitute an important element in the regeneration of 
the East, when, in the words of Biinsen, just quoted, it 
shall witness " the dawn of the resurrection morning.^' 

These people are the Parsees — all that is left of a 
once flourishing and mighty race who constituted the 
ancient empire of Persia. Under Cyrus and his im- 
mediate successors, that country was bounded on the 
north by the Caspian Sea and the Caucasian Moun- 
tains, on the east by the Indus and the Oxus, on the 
south by the Indian Ocean, and on the west by the 
Mediterranean. This great empire could boast of 
monarchs of vast wisdom and beneficence, and it de- 
veloped a civilization which perhaps in the East has 
never been surpassed for its magnificence and splen- 
dor. Such it was in the sixth century before Christ. 
It grew effeminate, and was destined to yield to the 
superior hardihood and culture of the Greek under 
Alexander and his successors. Still, it survived with 
varying fortunes until about the middle of the seventh 

The Parsees : their History, Manners, Customs and Eeligion, 
by Dosabhoy Framjee. Beviewed in the Christian £o:aminer, May, 
1859. 



THE PERSIAN EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 331 

century, when the Persian monarchy expired, being 
extinguished by the Mohammedan invaders under the 
fanatical Omar. These invaders and conquerors forced 
on the nation the creed of the Koran, and gave them 
no choice between that and the sword. The altar- 
fires of the Parsees were extinguished in blood. Only 
seven thousand of the " fire- worshipers," falsely so- 
called, survive at this day in Persia, subject to cruel 
indignities and persecutions. Multitudes were con- 
verted to Islamism at the point of the sword. Others 
fled the country for conscience' sake, and after suffer- 
ing untold hardships by sea and land finally settled 
in Western India, and their descendants to-day are 
the remarkable people there which we have just 
described. 

Who this great people were of whom so noble a 
remnant still survives, what was their origin and what 
the religion which was the inspiration of their achieve- 
ments and their brilliant civilization, and what rela- 
tionship that religion had with Christianity, become 
questions of very deep interest. They are another 
offshoot of the Aryan stock, whose original seat was 
the mountain-plains of central Asia. Probably be- 
fore the Indo-Aryan migration had entered the Pun- 
jab, the Perso- Aryan had entered Media on their 
way to Persia. Both carried along with them the 
religion of the Vedas. But in Persia, as in India, 
that religion was to be developed and reformed by a 
prophet of such vision and inspiration that we must 
regard him as one of the providential men raised up 
for the guidance of the nations. 

The religious books of the Parsees, known as the 



332 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



Zend Avesta, have not until within a few years been 
so edited and translated as to afford a very clear and 
consistent view of the original system of doctrine 
which they contain. The first translation in French 
by Anquetil Duperron was untrnstworthy and of in- 
ferior value. Since then the progress of Zend schol- 
arship has been indefatigable, as represented in the 
researches of European scholars, especially Eugene 
Burnouf, Dr. Haug and Professor Spiegel, the last 
of whom has devoted a laborious life to the study and 
criticism of the Zend A vesta. Their researches have 
been supplemented and made more available by the 
able criticism of Max Mliller and Baron Blinsen. 

The sacred books of the Parsees in their present 
form do not date earlier than A. D. 226. They had 
been destroyed in the course of the invasions and 
revolutions that had desolated the great Persian em- 
pire, and at the above date were only partially re- 
stored. How far they were restored from extant 
manuscripts, and how far from oral tradition, cannot 
now be ascertained. But the old Zend language, in 
which they were originally written, is so closely cog- 
nate with the Sanscrit, and the earliest of the Zend 
writings are so nearly identical in their whole spirit 
and cultus with the oldest of the Vedas, as to furnish 
conclusive evidence of the common ancestry of the 
Brahmin of India and the Parsee of Persia, and that 
they remained together long after other offshoots of the 
same stock, the Slavic, the Teutonic and the Celtic, 
had diverged westward into northern and central 
Europe. 

Professor Spiegel, probably the most competent 



THE PEESIAN EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 333 



critic of the Zend writings^ refers tlieir several parts 
to three different epochs, or three distinct stages of de- 
velopment. The earliest, which is the liturgy or sac- 
rificial service of the Perso -Aryans, has a close rela- 
tionship to the oldest hymns of the A^edas. It is 
nature-worship, or the worship of the elements and 
energies of nature personified and of spirits in the 
invisible world. Whatever is grand and beautiful 
and beneficent in the visible creation is made the 
object of adoration. But all is vague, irregular and 
without system, and belongs evidently to the rude 
cultus of the Yedic period, the traditional worship 
which the Perso- Aryan brought with him from the 
north. But the next stage, called the Yendidad, or 
Law Given, marks a decisive change. Some great 
mind is here at work, reforming the nature-worship 
of the former epoch, demolishing its polytheism and 
instituting in the place of it the more purely ethical 
system and worship of Or muz — the one God en- 
throned, in brightness above the sun, of whom, how- 
ever, the sun is the fit image and representative. In 
the third stage the reformed cultus becomes fully de- 
veloped and complete. The nature-gods of the Ve- 
dic period are not only dethroned, but turned into 
demons and ranged under Ahriman, the prince of 
darkness. The world of nature and of humanity is 
halved, and all that is beautiful and good and true is 
ascribed, to Ormuz and the six angels of light that 
do his will, and all that is dark and evil and false is 
ascribed to Ahriman and the six dusky demons who 
are his messengers. This antagonism runs through 
the whole system ; the kingdom of light and the 



334 



THE SYMPHOJsY OF RELIGTOXS. 



kinoxlom of darkness strno-p-le ao:aiiist each other 
throughout nature and in the human souL Besides 
the six angels of light are innumerable good spirits 
that work yvitli them, and besides the six evil demons 
are innumerable evil spirits subordinate to them and 
fighting on their side. The supreme messenger of 
Ormuz is Mithra, the victorious, rapid in action, who 
seats himself after the dawn has arisen, girt in pure 
light, on the summit of the mountains. Ahriman, on 
the other hand, takes the form of a serpent. He is 
^'the old infernal serpent who lays his touch on 
everything and deposits a germ of evil in all the 
creatures which Ormuz has made. 

The conflict is no longer external and physical 
merely. It is internal, moral and ethical. It is in 
the spirit-world and in the human soul, where Good 
and Evil are in daily combat; Ormuz the Creator, 
the great Father of Lights, with his amshaspands or 
bright train of messengers, helping the human soul 
and trying to win it ; Ahriman, the infernal serpent, 
with his dusky train of demons, trying to seduce it to 
eternal death. 'No longer, as in the Vedas, is this du- 
alism a struggle for mere temporal good, for horses 
and cows and green meadows and pastures. It ex- 
pands into a deadly moral and spiritual conflict, stir- 
ring the depths of moral sensibility; yearnings for 
moral purity and sunshine of the spirit as a bene- 
diction from the face of Ormuz; dread of moral im- 
purity and deprecation of its stains as poison from 
the touch of the infernal serpent. " In the measure 
of her moral sensibility," says a waiter who evidently 
was afraid of finding too much truth in the pagan 



THE PERSIAN EELIGIOUS COJfSCIOUSNESS. 335 



religions, "Persia may be fairly ranked among the 
brightest spots of ancient heathendom.""^ The dual- 
ism of its religion in its full and final development 
becomes none other than the deep conflict which it is 
the prime purpose of the Christian gospel to make 
full drawn and vivid in the human consciousness as 
an essential preliminary of the great victory and the 
immortal crown. 

The pneumatology of the Zend religion is in close 
congruity with its moral and ethical code. Its law of 
retribution separates the good from the bad after death, 
and in the immortal state every man reaps down the 
harvest he has sown in this. Whoever has lived in 
purity, and has not suffered the demons to get the 
230wer over him, will go rejoicing in his freedom into 
the realms of light. There is a bridge over the stream 
of death which all souls must pass over, and on this 
bridge is the final conflict between the demons and the 
angels of light for their possession. Souls who have 
yielded to the demons now become theirs and are car- 
ried by them into the realms of darkness. But the 
bright mountains of heaven overlook the stream of 
death. On them sits Mithra, the eye of Ormuz. He 
sees and knows his own, brings the pure soul over the 
bridge in safety, and leads him upward to bask in 
eternal light under the throne of Ormuz. 

The Persian Genesis, or the story of man's original 
creation, of his abode in a primeval paradise where he 
remained humble, innocent and pure, and devoted to 
the service of Ormuz ; of his temptation and fall 
through the wiles and temptations of Ahriman, who 

* Hardwick's Christ and oilier Masters, vol. ii., p. 393. 



336 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIONS. 



descended earthward in the form of a serpent, and by- 
fruit derived from his own province seduced him 
from his allegiance, is found mainly in the Bundhesh, 
which is comparatively modern, and which dates not 
earlier than the beginning of the third century. Pro- 
fessor Spiegel, however, is clearly of opinion that it 
was derived from early tradition and belonged to the 
original system, and was not interpolated into it. 
The story of the serpent as the enemy and tempter is 
found even in the Vedas, and the whole Persian 
Genesis is wrapped up in a symbol ization so unlike 
that of the Hebrew, and is in such close logical con- 
gruity with the entire Persian dualism, that it must 
have been developed out of it and belongs to it. 

What we have now given constitutes the main fea- 
tures and the coherent body of the Zend theology. 
The Avesta contains a great deal besides and much 
that is incongruous and absurd, for it is made up of 
the accretions of ages remote from each other, of com- 
mentaries piled upon the original text, just as the 
sacred literature of the Jews was the accumulation of 
centuries ; the hagiography, the Apocrypha and the 
Targums piled upon the body-of Moses until without 
diligent search and excavation Moses could not be 
found. The Persian dualism, however, forms a system 
of such grand and luminous proportions, so self-de- 
veloped and self->contained, that a faithful criticism 
does not fail to enucleate its form and features and 
give them prominence. They bespeak the presence and 
creative power of some great master-mind, both 
prophet and lawgiver, who had risen above the foggy 
illusions of mere nature- worship, and received into 



THE PERSIAN RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 337 



his clear, open vision some of the transcendent truths 
of universal religion ; — God in his oneness and sun- 
bright benignity ; man destined to an endless life, placed 
on earth for his moral probation under the supreme 
law that demands purity of thought, word and action ; 
exposed to the tempters who lure him downward, but 
with a guard of heavenly intelligences ever near to 
keep his will free and help him to right determina- 
tion ; the spirit-world with its retributions unveiled — 
on the one hand the dusky realm of Ahriman and his 
votaries, where Ormuz never shines, and on the other 
hand the mountains that rise close by the bridge of 
death on whose summit he shines for ever, and where 
happy, immortals from the earth who have kept his 
law shall always behold his face ; — these were doctrines 
revealed to the Perso-Aryan people long before the 
Hebrew prophets lived, and announced with an artic- 
ulation more clear and emphatic than we shall find 
anywhere in our canonical Hebrew Scriptures, the 
doctrine of one God alone being excepted. The per- 
son of Zoroaster looms up vast and dim in the pre- 
historic times of the Medo-Persian monarchies as the 
great prophet through whom these revelations came. 
History had placed him in or near the reign of Darius 
Hystaspes (B. C. 513), but the new researches remand 
him to a much earlier period. Biinsen even pushes 
him back to 2500 B. C. His position in time we 
shall probably never know, but he is so far back as to 
render futile all theories which would make him bor- 
row his doctrines from the revelations of the Semitic 
race. His place in the line of human development is 
a matter of more imj)ortance and easily determined. 

29 W 



338 



THE SYMPHONY OF TwELIGIOXS. 



He was to the Perso- Aryan race what Moses was to 
the Semitic ; and what Buddha was to the Indo-Aryan. 
Rather, he was both Moses and Isaiah in one, raised 
up and endowed by Providence for the revelation of 
great spiritual truths which were to lift his nation out 
of the naturalism of the Vedic religion into a spirit- 
ual worship, and an ethical faith that could inspire a 
great people for vast achievements and light the soul's 
pathway to immortality. How vain are the theories 
which some writers have spun out to show that Moses 
must have borrowed from Zoroaster, or else Zoroaster 
from Moses, because the Hebrew and Zend religions 
run into each other so constantly! As if the Divine 
Influx were such a small pencil of rays that it could 
fall only on one spot or into a single line of nation- 
ality ! As if God held only a single race in the for- 
mative power of his all-embracing Providence ! If 
he is the God of universal humanity, his care would 
be to educate it from its first beginnings and send 
teachers and prophets to every race ; and their prophe- 
syings, though variant in form as adaptive to different 
climes and conditions, would be found to have a vast 
resemblance in heart and essence, as their real signifi- 
cance was discharged from its local and temporal 
symbolizatious. 

Other doctrines are found in the Bundhesh which 
show unmistakable evidence of being interpolations. 
The resurrection of the dead; a last judgment here on 
the earth from which the wicked are to be remanded 
to the realm of darkness, and the righteous to possess 
this world and reign with Ormuz,in millennial glory; 
the coming of Sosiosh, the great Benefactor and Medi- 



THE PERSIAN RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSXESS. 339 

tor, to bring on this blessed consummation ; finally, 
the restoration of the whole creation to order and 
happiness when hell itself shall be purged, Ahriman 
shall vanish and Ormuz be all in all, — these are post- 
Christian additions to the Avesta plainly tacked on 
to the system of Zoroaster and inconsistent with it. 
In one respect, however, they are vastly significant. 
They indicate the deep and ever-widening chasm in 
the Persian dualism out of which, even from ancient 
days, had come sighings for the Mediator who should 
reconcile or abolish its unrelenting antagonisms. Two 
principles of good and evil, coequal and coetcrnal, dat- 
ing from an eternity past, extend logically their par- 
allel lines through the whole eternity to come. Neither 
is supreme. Zoroaster, though he rose clear of the 
nature- worship of the Vedas and dethroned their gods, 
did not rise clear of their dualism, but its everlasting 
files oppose themselves in more fixed and deadly 
array, halving between them both the world of nature 
and of spirit. Hence, as some relief, and doubtless with 
-the fond hope of making these parallel lines convergent, 
Mithra, the bright archangel, the eye of Ormuz," is 
endowed with the attributes of Mediator; he comes 
into the foreground, and Ormuz retires ; Mithra mar- 
shals the army of beneficent powers, and in him not 
only the happy souls find their conductor over the 
bridge of death, but he descends into hell, and the 
captives of the prince of darkness are the objects of 
his sympathy and care. Even before the coming of 
Christ, Mithra is made the dim forecast of that com- 
ing, the imperfect embodiment of the idea ; a token of 
the deeper abyss in the Persian religious consciousness 



340 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



from wliich came articulate prophesyings of fulfill- 
ment. 

In the preface to Matthew's Gospel wise men from 
the East, guided by a star, came to do homage to the 
infant Redeemer. The star betokened most beauti- 
fully the point where the Semitic and the Aryan con- 
sciousness were now blending in one, and their several 
systems of revelation were culminating in a common 
glory. Angel visits in the Oriental style, are described 
as the appearance of a star melting into the higher 
vision of the prophet or seer to enlighten him or lead 
him on his way. Whatever we make of this passage 
in the evangelist, it is doubly significant of two great 
truths. It is a graceful acknowledgment that the gift 
of seership was not monopolized by the Semitic religion, 
and that two conterminous systems of worship had 
become so far convergent that the prophesyings of 
both through the minds that best represent them had 
met and harmonized, so that the stars of the Judean 
and the Persian skies chimed together in the birth- 
song of Christ. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 

If the Indian peninsula shut in the Aryan people 
to contemplation and morbid self-inspection, the penin- 
sulas and the isles of Greece, with their stimulating 
atmospheres, incited them to the most joyous activities 
of body and mind. Never were a people placed amid 
such surroundings of Nature adapted to woo forth in 
graceful proportions the intellectual powers, as were 
the people of the Peloponnesus, Attica, Ionia and the 
isles of the ^gean Sea. The land and the sea every- 
where interpenetrate, and the larger peninsula includes 
several smaller ones, each shut off from the others by 
mountain ridges, covered very near to their summits 
with arable lands and pastures. Every morning from 
the coasts of Thrace the north wind comes down and 
passes over the island-sea, sifting the vapors from the 
air which sparkles through the brain and the nerves 
like an exhilarating ether. These islands, shores and 
peninsulas only waited for a people, bearing in them- 
selves the germs fit for the highest culture and de- 
velopment, to become the scene for the fairest drama 
of history to pass over them. 

Hither came another offshoot of the Aryan race 
from the table-lands of Central Asia. They seem to 
have passed round the northern shore of the Caspian 

29* 341 



342 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOKS. 



Sea, crossed the Caucasian Mountains into Armenia, 
thence into Phrygia or the table-lands of Asia Minor. 
Thence they seem to have parted into three streams 
of migration. The earliest of these was the Pelasgian, 
who crossed over the Hellespont, descended through 
Thessaly and spread over Northern and Southern 
Greece in times so far remote that, were it not for un- 
mistakable affinities of language, they would not have 
been recognized as one of the Grseco- Aryan races. 
The Dorians followed, though long afterward, pressed 
everywhere upon the Pelasgians, and became strong, 
especially in the Peloponnesus. A third stream of 
migration took the name of lonians, and these, in- 
stead of crossing the Plellespont, spread along the 
west coast of Asia Minor, and gave name to Ionia, 
the native land of Homer, to become still later the 
land of the constellated churches. There were other 
and smaller streams, but these three were the more 
important, and in their subsequent fusion or mutual 
absorption they make up the people known as the 
Hellenes, whose art and literature have done so much 
to humanize mankind. The Pelasgians, however, 
soon disappear from sight, absorbed as they were in 
the other two races, so that the Dorians and the lonians 
halve between them the beautiful land of Hellas with 
its brilliant activities and achievements as they are 
known in history. 

The Hellenic religious consciousness may be de- 
scribed under four distinct stages or epochs. The 
earliest is that of monotheism, abstract and sublime, 
like that of the Hebrew, though more vague and 
shadowy; in the second there is a relapse into nature- 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 343 



worship and polytheism ; in the third there is a modi- 
fication of nature-worship by a higher spiritualism ; 
in the fourth there is a further modification by phil- 
osophy, in which the Hellenic religious development 
finds its consummation. This fourfold development 
cannot be sharply distinguished by divisions of time, 
for then the different periods would run into and over- 
lap each other ; but these four phases of Grecian life 
must be studied and discriminated if we would get an 
adequate conception of the Hellenic religious con- 
sciousness. The first three shall be our topics in the 
present chapter; the last, or the stage in which the 
Greek and the Oriental religions alike find their 
richest developments and their culmination in Platon- 
ism, will be the topic of the chapter that follows. 

I. We have already seen that the religion of the 
Vedas, though in the main polytheistic — the worship 
of the personified forces of Nature — has nevertheless 
distinct traces of an earlier monotheism, not quite ex- 
tinct, but breaking sometimes through the ritual of 
nature-worship, clear and sublime as in the songs 
of the Hebrew poets. They indicate a prehistoric 
period of pure theism, of simple, childlike worship. 
The evidence returns upon us in the traditions of 
these Grseco- Aryan people. The Pelasgians — the first 
comers into Greece that we know anything about, 
who came thither long before the Vedic period — were 
not idolaters. Without images, without temples, with- 
out a name even for the Deity, they worshiped the 
Supreme ; for Zeus, the word which they employed, 
was the luminous and all-embracing ether which indi- 



344 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIONS. 



cated his Omniscence and Omnipresence. He was the 
Unknown above Nature, but Himself the All-know- 
ing and All-pervading One. They indicated his near 
relation to mankind by calling him Father Zeus 
(C^f^C narrjp', hence Jupiter), and never in all the 
Greek idolatries was this conception so entirely ex- 
tinguished that it would not sometimes reappear. In 
this Pelasgic period of pure childlike worship, they 
had their altars on the mountain-tops under the 
naked heavens, which were without speech or lan- 
guage, but whose endless processions showed forth his 
divine glory. Zeus, or the luminous sether, the abode 
of the Invisible, was the same to the Pelasgi as Va- 
runa in the Kig Yeda must have been to the Aryans 
in their native seats ; for Varuna was the all-knowing 
and encircling Heavens. This ^'Unknown God,'' 
ever hovering in the voiceless depths, ever brooding 
above the consciousness, and sometimes dimly and 
vaguely manifesting his presence within the con- 
sciousness, seems ever to have held the Greek mind 
to some acknowledgment of a need of Divine dis- 
closure to it from above and beyond the sphere of 
their local deities. Through all subsequent history 
the Arcadian Zeus, formless, unapproachable, dwelt 
in sacred light over the oak-tops of the Lycsean moun- 
tain and when Paul preached to the Athenians, he 
found among the gods whose images lined the Piraeus 
or crowded the Acropolis an altar to the "Unknown 
God,'' who had neither image nor temple, and who 
was waiting to be revealed. 

It is the Zeus, not of Olympus, but of the Pelasgian 
age, whom Hesiod invokes in his " Works and Days," 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 345 



iu a half-inspired prophetic strain, denouncing retri- 
bution on the wrono^s of his times — a strain which 
Biinsen pronounces a sermon not inferior in bold 
freedom and exalted moral tone to the preaching of 
any Hebrew prophet/^ All other gods sink into 
messengers of the one Supreme, and Zeus appears 
out of the bending heavens, like the Jehovah of the 
Hebrew Scriptures, to dethrone wicked monarchs and 
make straight the crooked ways. 

"For thrice ten thousand holy demons rove 
The nurturing Earth, commissioned from above : 
Hovering they glide to Earth's remotest bound, 
A cloud aerial veils their forms around ; 
Guardians of man, their glance alike surveys 
The upright judgments and the unrighteous ways. 
A virgin pure is Justice ; from the king 
Of heaven her birth ; a venerable thing, 
And glorious to the deities on high, 
Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky. 
Driven by despiteful wrong, she takes her seat. 
In lowly grief, at Zeus' eternal feet. 
There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend ; 
So rue the nations when their kings ofiend ; 
When uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill. 
They bend the laws and wrest them to their will. 
Beware, O monarchs ! ye that gifts devour. 
Make straight your judgments now in timely hour. 
He wounds himself who aims another's wound ; 
His evil counsels on himself rebound. 
Zeus at his awful pleasure looks from high 
With all-discerning and all-knowing eye ; 
Made bare before its ken, no injured right 
Within the city walls eludes the light." 

So, again, gleams of the ancient monotheism break 
through the verse of ^schylus, where he exclaims, 



346 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



"Zeus is the tetlier, Zeus the Earth, Zeus heaven, 
The world and aught beyond the world is he." ^ 

It was^ in the nature of things, impossible for this 
chaste worship of the Pelasgic period to continue. It 
rose out of the primeval instincts of human nature, 
met and sustained by no objective revelation which 
could give it a resting-place. ^N'o form had come 
down through the formless void as the embodiment 
of the divine moral perfections, and hence the relapse 
into nature- worship and polytheism. 

II. The period that now follows corresponds in its 
earliest stages with that of the Yedas, and synchronizes 
with them. It was ushered in by the Dorians, the new- 
comers from Asia, where the old monotheism was al- 
ready on the wane. The aspects of nature around 
their new homes in the Peloponnesus and the isles of 
the ^gean offered a stimulus to the imagination more 
keen and bracing even than the magnificent scenery 
of Asia, and the all-comprehending Deity is separated 
and mapped out into a multitude of provincial gods. 
At first they are huge and indistinct, with grand and 

^ It is disputed, however, whether the primitive Aryan religion 
was monotheism or polytheism. That the old Greek religion and 
all its cognates were monotheistic, that the old monotheism was 
never extinct, but always lived, however dimly, in the Hellenic 
religious consciousness, and never ceased asserting itself, see the 
evidences copiously displayed in Cudworth's fourth chapter. 
Plutarch, affirming that the most ancient theologers and poets re- 
solved all things unto God, and that the later naturalists had cor- 
rupted their doctrine, sums up the true doctrine m the following 
line, w^hich he quotes as the ancient universal belief: Zsvg apxv, 
Zevg fiEGoa^ A/.of 61 en iravra TreAdvraL. (Defect of Oracles, p. 436 j 
Cudworth, i., 512.) 



THE HELLENIC EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 347 



wavy outlines, like the powers of nature which they 
personify. The overarching and flooding heavens, 
which drown the Flora they have called into being, 
are Uranus, who banishes his own children, and both 
his name and attributes indicate his Asiatic origin. 
The teeming Earth becomes Gaia, his wife, and they 
beget children, who dethrone him. Kronos, or Time, 
succeeds him, to be dethroned in turn by Zeus, his 
son, who reigns in his stead. Zeus is no longer the 
underived and infinite one. He answers to the Indra 
of the Vedas, the god who lightens and thunders from 
over the mountains. Poseidon rules the waters — a 
god imported from Phoenicia, but soon naturalized ; 
for the Greeks became a commercial people, and, like 
the Phoenicians, lived upon the sea. Pluto rules 
Hades, under the Earth. Aphrodite is born of the 
sea-foam, the goddess of love, whose lines of ravish- 
ing beauty are graceful as the curves of its waves. 
Athene, who i-s both Wisdom and Power, is born of 
the brain of Zeus, a faint image of the Christian Logos 
born eternally of the infinite mind. Music, which is 
nearly allied to poetry, is too divine to be regarded as 
a human invention : it is the gift of Apollo, the child 
of Zeus, who forecasts the future, and who inspires 
both melody and song. We have called this polythe- 
ism a relapse from the old religion. We must regard 
it, however, as the outcome of a warmer and more 
plenary sense of the Divine presence, and contact with 
nature and man, than the old vague monotheism was 
capable of producing ; and though a recession from the 

This, however, is the theogony of the later poets. The Iliad 
makes Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus. 



348 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIONS. 



old religion, yet a necessary step toward a higher and 
warmer monotheism yet to come. In that wonderful 
clime, where the air had almost a spiritual transpar- 
ency, and the light clothed everything it touched with 
celestial hues, and the hours sped so joyfully that the 
flight of time made music, imagination gave eyes and 
ears to faith. God was no longer the invisible, but 
on the hill-tops and in the groves and the fountains 
and the blue air and the clear, sparkling weaves, faces 
more than human melted through and became visible, 
and in the undertones of nature voices more than mor- 
tal filled the ear and the soul. God was no longer the 
unapproachable and unappropriated one, but gods from 
every phase of nature and life looked into the faces of 
men. 

This sense of the Divine — of a Divine thus parted 
off and appropriated among the powers of nature per- 
sonified as deities — had already become general and 
abounding when the great Master Magician came to 
touch it, and give to it objective forms and colors and 
local habitations. Homer, though born in Ionia, was 
the child of all Greece, for the spirit of its cultus a^d 
the swelling tides of its intellectual life converge in 
him and come into clear utterance in a language 
which in strength and grace has been compared to the 
body of a well-trained athlete, in which every mus- 
cle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where 
there is no trace of tumidity and of inert matter, and 
all is power and life." The Greek mythology, already 
tending vaguely into form, was bathed in the w^arm 
splendors and melted down into the exquisite moulds 
of the Homeric imagination, and thence came forth hu- 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 349 



manized in shapes of immortal beauty. The Iliad is 
referred to about 900 B. C, and it became the sacred 
book^ first of Ionic or Eastern Greece, and gradually 
of the Dorian West, for it was the authoritative inter- 
preter of the Hellenic religious consciousness. Hence- 
forth the Grecian deities are neither grotesque nor 
formless : they constitute another Greece, somewhat 
idealized, holding that seat on the heights of Olympus, 
drinking nectar, eating ambrosia, quarreling, revel- 
ing, loving, hating, and generally enjoying them- 
selves in a human way, though on a grander scale 
than their subjects below. They are not confined to 
the Olympian heights ; they mingle in human affairs ; 
they stream outward to the circuit of the known world 
and stream back to their endless abode. Painting and 
sculpture combined with poetry to bring the Greek 
heaven near to the earth, and clothe its deities in the 
ravishing charms and the awful majesty which were 
the idealizations of all the human virtues and perfec- 
tions such as a perfected humanity was then under- 
stood to be. Apollo leads forth the glorious !N"ine, 
fragrant with ambrosial flowers, down through the 
hollows and over the hills, waking the drowsy shep- 
herds from their midnight slumber, filling the finer 
sense of all godlike minds with prophetic fire, and 
whose far-off receding harmonies climb up the Olympus 
again. There is still a dark background of Fate 
which rules even the Olympian gods, the retiring 
shadow of the old monotheism. 

Such and so joyous was the Greece of these lovely 
shores and islands, and which poetry reproduced in 
diviner forms in the Olympian heavens. But how 

30 



350 



THE SYMPHOXY OF RELIGIOXS. 



vastly different was the Greece of its underworld! 
When it transcends the sphere of sensuous beauty 
and enjoyment^ how confused and ghostly all things 
appear ! In the eleventh book of the Odyssey, Ulysses 
descends into Hades, and we have here the best con- 
ceptions of the people and age respecting the state of 
departed souls. He travels northward into Cimmerian 
darkness, and there finds an entrance to the infernal 
abodes. All is sad and wan and gloomy. The ghosts 
are no lousier men and women. The best of them 
have parted with their warm and joyous being. They 
are '^the phantom nations.'^ They walk in the dusk, 
or in pale, spectral light. Those who had been illus- 
trious warriors pine for the terrestrial air. The great 
Achilles is in mournful gloom, and longs for the body 
he once wore, that he may again "thunder over the 
Phrygian plain.'^ Atrides has lost all substance, and ' 
stands an empty shade too subtile to give or receive 
an embrace. The spectres appear, shoal after shoal ; 
but compared to what they were in this world, they are 
the mirage that gives a pale reflection of some goodly 
city on the shore. How wretchedly does this Greece 
of the underworld compare with the bright liviug one 
which flourished above in the Peloponnesus, in Attica, 
in Ionia and the ^gean isles ! 

Of course a people of so much intellectual and 
spiritual life would not rest satisfied in the prospect 
of such a gloomy immortality as this ; and during the 
five hundred years which interspace the polytheism 
of Homer and the philosophy of Plato, we trace the 
currents of that life inspired and guided to a higher 
disclosure of spiritual and divine realities. 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS COXSCIOUSXESS. 351 



III. On their course of development toward a 
higher spiritualism, a most important educative power 
is ascribed to the dramatic poets, at the head of which 
stands the name of ^schylus. The ethical element 
of the Greek religion now asserts itself in its terrible 
grandeur. The supreme moral law, lyi^ig hard down 
upon the conscience, setting the right sharply over 
against the wrong, glorifying those who are its obedient 
subjects, but scourging the wrongdoer to his doom, the 
unseen providence that controls the drama of human 
history, the torments of conscience crying for some ex- 
piation for crime, — these appear with more or less 
distinctness in the early Greek drama, and they point 
toward higher theism. The Erinnys that follow the 
murderer and whip him with snakes, are a more signifi- 
cant type of the divine justice than any local and arbi- 
trary burnings in hell-fire. " Crime never dies without 
posterity^' is the lesson of the great dramatist, and 
the voice of Justice in the guilty conscience is "the 
lyreless hymn of the Furies." On the other hand, 
Fortune, which is not blind fate, but a liigher wisdom 
mending the wisdom of man, assures to the just and 
the good their abounding reward : 

" The issue from the power that springs, 
Hath more of bliss than bale ; 
Grace sparkles on thy golden wings, 
And happiest of all happy things 
The gifts that load thy scale." 

Xo illustration of the supremacy of the higher 
law more touching or more sublime could be given 
than in Antigone, the pure, sweet embodiment of 
moral heroism and brotherly love. The influence 



352 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



of the drama in giving ethical tone and power to the 
Greek religion is shown at large by Blinsen, to whose 
work the reader is referred who may desire to follow 
the subject into its details."^ 

There was another influence, and a vastly important 
one. Blinsen has done something like tardy justice 
to the mystic element in the Greek religion. Isot less 
than the Hebrew people, the Greeks had their prophets 
and seers, though under a different name. The mvs- 
tic element seems to have been an endowment of the 
Aryan and Semitic races, with this difference, that tlie 
Semitic were withdrawn more entirely from the influ- 
ences of the natural world, and therefore made recep- 
tive of a monotheism less liable to be sunk in the 
forces of matter and divided among them, and made 
subject to the fallacies of the senses. The belief was 
widespread, especially among the Dorians, that the 
minds of men lay open to the influence of a spirit- 
world — that some were more susceptible to it than 
others, so as to become oracles of the gods in making 
known the divine will and predicting the future. 
There were families in which the susceptibilities were 
more marked and manifest; these became priestly 
families, in whose line the prophetic gift became hered- 
itary. In rude and savage forms these susceptibilities 
ran into orgies in which frenzied women reeled and 
danced under the afflatus of the god and to the noise 
of harp and timbrel. These orgies, say Grote and 
Curtius, were imported from Thrace, from Phrygia 
and from Egypt, but it was only because they came 
in on the line of Aryan migration and developed the 

* Gott in Geschiclit. 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 353 

native susceptibilities of the Aryan race. In subtler 
forms and under the influence of a higher culture, 
they were the inspirations of the most impassioned 
poetry, which rose sublimely into prophecy and seer- 
ship, and even exerted a plastic power over philosophy 
itself. What the prophets were to the Hebrew race, the 
Sibylla, the Pythia and the Orphic poets were to the 
Greek, with this difference, that with the' Greek the 
prophecy came through the natural mind and from a 
spirit- world in closer correspondence with it. The 
Sibyl, if we may credit Herodotus, was a thousand 
years before his day ; therefore long before the times 
of Homer, and so early as 600 B. C., a collection was 
made of the Sibylline prophecies in Homeric Greek. 
The Pythia or esctatic seeress was of a later day than 
the Sibyl, but the only difference between them was 
that the Pythia was connected with a public oracle 
and her inspiration intensified by external agencies. 

The mystic element in the Gr^eco-Aryans which 
Blinsen calls "second sight," but which was none 
other than the inbreathings of a supersensible world, 
may be traced in a threefold development — in the 
Orphic poets, in the Greek oracles and the Greek 
mysteries, each of which had a powerful influence on 
the national character. 

1. Greece, we said, was halved between the Ionic 
race in the East and the Dorian in the West. It is 
among the rough, uncultivated Dorians that we look 
most for the prophets and seers. The lonians were 
more polished and rationalized, and the Iliad first 
became their book of books. The Dorians, under a 
spirit akin to a lofty Hebraism, were swept more 

30* 



354 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOXS. 



directly by the rushing wiuds of a spirit-workL 
Aristotle says that Orpheus, Musseus and Linus are 
mythical names that stand for a Thracian religious cul- 
tus whose sayings and hymns were collected by Ono- 
macritus. So sacredly were they regarded that the 
compiler was banished for interpolating into them 
compositions of his own. Hesiod was a Dorian and 
prophet of the Orphic school, and, as we have seen, 
reproduced the old monotheism in the lofty rhyme 
which he builded, wherein not only the Mosaic doc- 
trine of a golden age reappears, but wherein the glori- 
fied men who belonged to it are the guardian angels 
of this world and mingle in its affairs to guide them ; 
for such were the myriads of "holy demons'^ who, 
Hesiod says, under aerial coverings watch over the 
ways of men. 

Pindar furnished, 494 B. C, a Theban and a poet 
of the Orphic school, and the greatest lyric poet that 
Greece ever produced. He was regarded by others, 
and probably by himself, as called to the poetic office 
by divine interposition ; for, during sleep, he saw a 
swarm of bees alight and cluster upon his lips. The 
honey that distilled from them afterward was widely 
sought both at home and in foreign courts ; but he 
sang not only of its life, its festivities and Olympian 
victories, but of a life to come. He on whom its light 
falls knows w^hat shall be hereafter. 

" That Avitli the dead below 
Spirits rebellious take fortliwitli tlieir doom ; 
And what is sinful done 
In this, Jove's empire, under earth at last 
Meets judgment strict from one 
Whose sentence is hy dire compulsion passed." 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS COXSCIOUSXESS. 



355 



On the other hand, those who keep their minds 
pure from taint of corruption, who have borne trial 
and come out of it pure, travel the eternal way to the 
land where no tears are ever shed, and where the sun 
" never quits their sphere,'^ and night shall be no 
more : 

*'0n that blest isle's encLanted ground 
Airs from ocean breathe around ; 
Burn the bright immortal flowers, 
Some on beds and some in bowers, 
From the branches hanging high ; 
Some fed by waters where they lie ; 
Of whose blossoms these do braid 
Armlets and crowns their brows to shade. 
Shines for them the sun's Avarm glow 
AYhen 'tis darkness here below. 
And the ground before their towers — 
Meadow lands with purple flowers — 
Teems with trees of incense fine — 
Teems with fruit of golden shine. 
Some in steed and wrestling feat, 
Some in dice, take pleasure sweet, 
Some in harping : at their side 
Blooms the Spring in all her pride. 
Fragrance all about is blown 

O'er that country of desire. 
Even as rich gifts are thrown 

Freely Cn the far-seen fire 
Blazing from the altar-stone." 

The ghostly world where Homer places his heroes 
pining for the upper light and air, emerges here into 
a warmer sunshine ; and though not the highest heaven 
conceivable, it is not very unlike Watts' sweet fields 
beyond the swelling floods,'^ except that its employ- 
ments are strictly Grecian and more natural and free. 

The utterances of personally inspired men and 



356 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOXS. 



womerij and the interference of supernal powers to 
guide both the individual and the nation, constitute a 
vital element of the Greek religious faith ; and instead 
of dying out in the course of intellectual progress, it 
only rises into clearer and more beautiful manifesta- 
tion. It appears nowhere more pronounced than in 
Socrates, in whom prophecy and philosophy blend 
together at the very acme of Grecian development. 
He was philosopher, prophet and seer all in one. He 
believed himself constantly guided and forewarned of 
danger by a voice within which came from one of the 
holy demons who, according to Hesiod, are the mes- 
sengers everywhere of a controlling and interacting 
Providence. He believed, moreover, that he had open 
vision of these divine and interacting agencies ; for 
so Plato reports him. He w^as to die w^hen the sacred 
ship returned from Delos. The ship has arrived at 
evening at Cape Suniam, and will be in the next morn- 
ing. The friends of Socrates seek his prison at early 
dawn to let him know that the day has come for him 
to die, and to take a last tender farewell. He aston- 
ishes them w4th the assurance that his information is 
better than theirs. " It will not come to-day," said 
Socrates. In a vision which I saw last night just 
before waking, a graceful woman in white robes ap- 
proached, looked at me and said : ^ O Socrates, on the 
third day thou reachest Phthias' fertile soil.'" * So it 
was ; the ship was delayed and came in the day fol- 
lowing; and the day after, the third day, Socrates 
reached the land of Grecian heroes and sages. Sub- 

* The words of Achilles in the Iliad when speaking of his 
return home. 



THE HELLENIC RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 357 



lime and lieavenly trust, fitly representing the Plel- 
lenic life on its spiritual side,' whence came the Power 
that has carved it in forms of immortal grace to de- 
light the world ! 

2. The worship of Apollo embodied in a more pub- 
lic and organized form the mystic element of Hellenic 
culture, and had a widespread and plastic influence 
over the Hellenic character and development. It was 
earlier than Homer, but in the post-Homeric times it 
had changed, anfl embodied the highest conceptions of 
the Greek religion. 'No matter for the endless legends 
about the god found in the hymns which the poets 
dedicated to him. We do not believe, with Grote, that 
the more intelligent worshipers received them as his- 
tory. The Apollo of their worship was the ideal em- 
bodied in statues, where Genius in its highest hours 
of inspiration had envisaged all conceivable divine 
benignity, intellectual power and moral beauty. The 
power of healing, of punishing crime, of rewarding 
virtue, of music and song, and especially of revealing 
the mind of Zeus in forecasting the future,— all this 
was embodied in the Apollo of the Grecian temples. 
He led forth the Nine — for such, at length, became the 
number of his choir- — and they spake or sang through 
the lips of men of all knowledge and mystery. The 
Past and Future were illumined alike at their word — 

" What will be for ever, 
What v/as from of old." 

Hence, throughout Greece and beyond Greece, in 
Asia Minor and at Rome, there were oracles dedicated 
to Apollo, and those who had shown the highest sus- 



358 



THE SYMPIIOXY OF RELIGIONS. 



ceptibilities for supernal iuflaences and openings were 
selected and made priestesses of their shrines. They 
were not the only oracles instituted and resorted to 
for divine revelation and guidance. Zeus, with other 
deities, had theirs of old, and continued to have them; 
but Apollo was the more universally recognized medi- 
ator through whom the quickening and informing 
power came down from heaven to men. Statesmen 
hearkened to it ; poets sang only as receptive of it ; 
warriors paused before it for divine direction; men 
consulted it before undertaking any new enterprise ; 
^)hilosophers held their minds open to it, invoking a 
wisdom above their own ; and historians wrote their 
W'Orks wdthin the sphere of its illumination. The 
most famous of these oracles was at Delphi, which 
exerted a unitizing influence over the Hellenic races. 
It was the favorite haunt of the Nine. Pythagoras 
w^as a philosopher of the Orphic school and a zealous 
worshiper at the Delphic sanctuary, not merely on 
political grounds, but from religious convictions ; and 
so the P}i:hagorean philosophy, the well of truth from 
which Plato drank so largely, must have been shaped 
more or less under prophetic inspiration. Believe 
who will that all this worship was factitious and with- 
out impletion from a genuine spirit-world, and that a 
people whose works have nourished the intellect of 
twenty-five centuries, and furnished its models, drew 
their inspiration from names and shadows I If we 
thought the Hellenic religious consciousness out of 
w^hich these perfect models took their shape and color- 
ing, belied them and answered to no objective realities, 
w^e should have no sufficient ground for sho^ving that 



THE HELLENIC EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 359 



the religious consciousness of any age might not be 
equally mendacious. 

3. Aspirations for the immortal life and a craving for 
some sufficing knowledge of it, gave rise to the organ- 
ization of the Greek mysteries. They seem to have 
existed from the earliest times, especially among the 
Dorians.* They were secret fraternities bound to- 
gether by solemn rites and ascetic vows, and it is 
evident that the mystic element mingled largely in 
their ceremonies. The Pythagoreans formed an exten- 
sive religious and political brotherhood that exerted a 
powerful influence over the condition of the Italian 
cities; and from the fact that the Pythagorean philoso- 
phy undertook to scale the highest heavens and bring 
down knowledge from thence, it is inferred that they 
had openings, or thought they had, into the mysteries 
of death, of the metempsychosis and of immortality. 
This was certainly the case with the brotherhood 
organized at Eleusis, which became the most cele- 
brated within the limits of Greece proper. They 
allegorized the legend of Ceres and Proserpina, and 
unfolded from it the deathless nature of the soul ; and 
their dramatic exhibitions were so arranged as to 
impress the doctrine with awful power upon the 
imagination. Their rites of lustration also had a 
moral significance, impressing the mind of the ini- 
tiated with the necessity of moral purity as a con- 
dition of future happiness. Grote holds the mysteries 
in light esteem. 'Not so Isocrates, who says, " They 
secure those admitted to them the most blissful hopes, 
not only for the duration of this life, but for ever.^' 
* See Grote, i., pp. 22, 23. 



360 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



Not SO Cicero, who says of them, " We have not only 
received the means of living joyfully, but of dying 
with better hopes/' That they took hold of auy 
knowledge that would now be of value, no one would 
affirm ; but they are of exceeding interest as express- 
ing the long, deep sighings of the Grecian heart to 
rend the veil of separation, and let in upon the dark 
places of the earth the glories of the great Hereafter. 

The mystic element tended strongly to modify the 
Homeric polytheism, to clothe its deities in more 
spiritual attributes and make them the objects of a 
more spiritual worship. The Greek philosophy which 
dawned with Thales and reached its meridian in 
Plato, modified it still more in its approximation to a 
monotheism higher and more distinctly apprehended 
than the old shadowy monotheism could have been. 
The inspirations of poetry, philosophy and religion, 
as they breathe through the Greek mind, have their 
crowning perfection and fullness in Plato ; and they 
foreshadow in him with so much distinctness the 
truths of the Hebrew and Christian Pevelations, that 
some have imagined that Christianity borrowed from 
Plato ; as if the Spirit from which all genuine inspira- 
tion comes, would not show in all ages the traces of 
identity and unity among the best minds that receive 
it. His system, in fact, is a masterly eclecticism, 
combining in one beautiful mosaic what is purest and 
best in all the Oriental ante-Christian religions and 
philosophies, and may well form a concluding chapter 
in the symphony of religions. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE PLATONIC IMMORTALITY. 

PythagoraSj a native of Samos, was born not far 
from the year 584 B. C, and therefore flourished 
about one hundred and fifty years before Plato. He 
was both reflective and all-sided. More than Shak- 
speare even, he seems to have earned the appellation 
of "myriad-minded." He traveled east and west, 
seeking out what was good and true in all religions, 
and then combining them into one comprehensive 
system. He was prophet as well as philosopher ; and 
how much he received through his own prophetic 
vision we do not know from the scanty materials 
which we have pertaining to his life and doctrine. 
He went to Egypt and was initiated into the Egyp- 
tian mysteries. He went to India, and from the 
priests of the most ascetic school penetrated to the 
inmost religious consciousness of the Hindus. He 
went to Persia and learned of the Magi. From 
Egypt or from India, or from both, he brought home 
the doctrine of the metempsycliosis and pre-existence. 
He was a devout worshiper of Apollo at the Delphian 
shrine, as already related, and a firm believer in the 
immortality of the soul. He combined music, mathe- 
matics, philosophy and religion all in one; and he 
seems to have been the first who conceived the idea 



81 



361 



.362 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIONS. 



of the planetary and stellar orbits arranged on a grand 
musical scale, so that the heavenly orbs make har- 
mony in their motions and sing together the unend- 
ing song of the creation. 

All this is reproduced in Plato, transfused and 
moulded anew by his wonderful genius. In Pythag- 
oras, therefore, as expounded by his ablest disciple, 
the East and the West, as it then was, meet together ; 
and they give us the best thought of the Orient, clari- 
fied by the Greek intellect, in a system which fore- 
shadows more perfectly than any other the traths of 
Christianity. 

A primitive chaos which had no beginning, is an 
essential postulate of the old Greek religion. The 
idea of creation, as we understand the word, was en- 
tirely foreign to the Greek mind. It knew of but 
two alternatives — atheism, which makes phenomena 
an evolution from unintelligent and unconscious nou- 
mena, and dualism, in which the primitive chaos is 
operated upon by some intelligent Power outside of it 
and co-eternal with it. The course of Greek philoso- 
phy for one hundred and fifty years, is a see-saw be- 
tween these two alternatives ; sometimes, however, on 
the atheistical side, sublimating in idealism, and some- 
times determining grossly into materialism. Pythag- 
oras, as his system is elaborated and finished by 
Plato, rises to a clearly-pronounced monotheism, 
cumbered with the mildest dualism that could be 
wrought into it. The Deity constructs the universe 
after the perfect patterns which he had always at 
command. The patterns were not abstractions, not 
his own mere subjective thoughts, but self-subsisting 



THE PLATONIC IMMORTALITY. 



363 



Eiitia, or things in themselves. These he let down 
into chaos and clothed with matter ; hence this system 
of jN^ature with the whole range of material phe- 
nomena. Hence the chaos changed into the Cosmos. 
The chaotic matter is in its nature corrupt and dis- 
orderly, but the Ideals which are embodied in it are 
good and fair, and bring the chaos into comparative 
order, though they get poorly revealed in these de- 
ceptive and sensuous phenomena. Then the Deity 
breathed a soul into the Cosmos and made it alive ; 
and he gave to each planet and star its own separate 
soul, so that the whole Cosmos is a God, and planets 
and stars are lesser gods in the all-providing life of 
the Cosmos that contains them. 

Last of all were formed the souls of men. But 
before they were incarnated in material bodies, they 
were placed each on its own star there to be borne 
round in its radiant orbit, hear the star-music, drink 
in the knowledge of the heavenly spheres and the 
wisdom of the gods themselves. There tliey have 
direct knowledge of the ideals, the eternal models 
of all beauty and perfection as they exist in se and 
in their naked excellence and glory, not as they 
are muffled and half concealed in earthly forms. 
After these celestial experiences these souls are born 
into earthly bodies, under whose heavy wrappages 
at first all memory of this prenatal experience is 
buried and lost. In telling us why they are thus 
incarnated and buried in sense, Plato is not consistent 
with himself. In the Phcedrus it would seem to be on 
account of some lapse in the prenatal state; but in 
the Republic and the Tim^eus it would seem to be 



364 



THE SYMPHOXY OF EELIGIONS. 



necessary in the course of all human experience, and 
in order that every soul may have the temptations, 
the struggles and the victories essential to the attain- 
ment of immaculate virtue. 

At any rate, here we are in these corruptible bodies. 
In each of these bodies are two mortal and bestial 
souls, and the celestial sorJ is yoked with them and 
dragged by them downward into sense. If, however, 
it resists, it keeps itself immactilate. Xo stains of 
tlie body will rest upon it. Moreover, by quitting 
sense through meditation and by retiring within itself, 
and thence rising by an internal way toward God, the 
knowledge impressed on the soul in its prenatal state 
revives and comes out as in flame letters ; the star- 
mtisic is heard again, and the di^dne patterns of all 
goodness and beauty come forth anew in the conscious- 
ness. So the highest and best knowledge comes by 
reminiscence. Literally, our birth is " a sleep and a 
forgetting,'^ and our higher birth is an awaking and a 
resurrection through all the burial-places of memory. 
Even the contemplation of physical beauty, to the 
purely philosophic mind, instead of exciting amorous 
desire, revives in the soul a knowledge and love of 
the ideal beauty and the supreme excellence, because 
of some correspondency between the ideals and^ the 
earthly types and copies where they are dimly sha- 
dowed forth. 

The sotil that keeps itself chaste, neither stained by 
bodily appetites nor lured by the mockeries of sense, 
reascends at death to its native star, to enjoy in re- 
doubled measure the divine banquet of wisdom and 
the harmony of the spheres. It reascends in a refined 



THE PLATONIC IMMORTALITY. 



365 



ethereal body resplendent with its own purities, never 
again to be incarnated. But if the soul sinks down 
into sense and becomes marked w^ith its pollutions, 
then at death it starts on the long and dreary circuit 
of the metemjDsychosis. It goes to Hades, thence to 
be reborn into earthly bodies — such bodies as shall be 
the incarnation and the image of the lusts or the fan- 
tasies to which it has yielded ; tigers, wolves, swine, 
reptiles or hawks and kites, or sparrows that flit 
through the air. Or souls may be born again into 
human bodies. Cowards become women. But never 
does the soul reasceud to its starry heaven till its 
round of transmigration has expiated its sins and 
placed it on the ascending way toward the blest abodes. 
The reader will not fail to recognize here the metem- 
psychosis of the Hindus w^hich Pythagoras found in 
India and imported into Greece. 

Plato's conception of immortality and its retribu- 
tions, is embodied in one of these myths, which in his 
discoursings reminds us of the parable of Dives and 
Lazarus in the illustrative teachings of Jesus. 

There was a certain man, a Pamphylian, Erus by 
name, who fell in battle. But while the bodies of 
others who fell were corrupted, the body of Erus re- 
mained untouched by decay ; and on the twelfth day, 
when laid on the funeral pile, the spirit revived within 
it. Erus had been all this while in transic vision, and 
he told what he saw in the scenery of the immortal 
life, whither his soul had been permitted to go. He 
w^ent in spirit to a mysterious and hallowed place 
where the ways part upward and downward. There 
were the mouths of two chasms that opened dow^n- 

31 * 



366 



THE SYMPHOXY OF EELIGIOXS. 



ward on the left into Hades. There were two open- 
ings on the right upward into heaven. The judges 
sat between. Through one of the chasms downward 
souls were sinking to their punishment; and through 
the other chasm souls were rising, to be reincarnated 
and reborn into earthly bodies. Through one of the 
openings upward souls were ascending into heaven ; 
and through the other opening souls were descending 
from heaven, to be reincarnated also and reborn into 
earthly bodies. These last were not sinful souls, but 
such as had not yet experienced trial and conflict. 
Those rising from beneath were covered with dust 
and squalor, and they told of the dreadful punish- 
ments they had witnessed and experienced during the 
long thousand years of their dismal circuit below. 
Those descending from above told of their enjoy- 
ments amid scenery of amazing beauty. The punish- 
ments on those from below were for wrongs com- 
mitted, and were meted out to every one tenfold, 
according to his deserts. There were some, however, 
who were not permitted to rise for a new incarnation. 
There was a tyrant who had murdered his kindred 
whom the throat of the chasm would not disg^orcre. 
It bellowed when he tried to ascend through its mouth, 
— a signal for the avengers to cast him into Tartiirus ; 
those, like him, dyed too deep in wickedness for any 
expiation, on the same signal given, were thrust down 
lacerated with thorns. 

All the souls meeting from below and from above 
went into a meadow close by, where they mingled 
together for seven days. They told their varied his- 
tory and experience, so that tliey learned from each 



THE PLATONIC IMMORTALITY. 



367 



other the mysteries of heaven and helh There were 
greetings of old friends and acquaintances. Thence 
they all passed on to where the Fates gave them the 
choice of the new lives they were to live. On this 
choice the new future depends ; and Plato adds one 
myth to another to illustrate the supreme importance 
of choosing with single reference to a life of justice 
inspired with a love of justice. He^ or his seer in 
whose name he speaks, describes the wrong and fool- 
ish choosino^ of those who are influenced bv somethino- 
painful in the past which they wish to avoid, not by 
a single aim for what is just, beneficent and pure. 
The new life once chosen, there is. no reversal. The 
Fates make it sure that their choice they shall have. 
If they choose in reference to honor or pleasure, and 
get involved in new and painful retributions, they 
have only to blame themselves, for God is clear. 
Their new lives chosen, they drank the Lethean 
waters and were laid asleep; and when midnight was 
approaching, there was thunder and an earth c[uake, 
and these souls went myriads of ways like slioot- 
ino; stars to new births and incarnations on the 
earth. 

Such is the Platonic immortality. The evidence 
of it, as exhibited in the Pheedon, which gives the last 
conversation with Socrates and the arguments which 
then came from his lips, is mainly intuitive. It is 
based substantially on the fact of the soul's pre-exist- 
ence and on its intrinsic celestial nature. The man 
w'ho resists the allurements of sense and appetite, and 
lives justly and purely, becomes conscious of the 
''^ This mytli is found in tlie Eepublic at the End. 



368 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIOXS. 



divine signature on his soul^ and comes into tlie full 
possession of truths which he neither originated nor 
learned from tradition, nor fi'om sensuous phenomena, 
but which are eternal and inborn. He comes to a 
vision of divine Ideals which are within and above 
sensuous phenomena, and he holds commerce with 
them. Life and death are opposites. But the soul 
is essential life ; therefore, where the soul is, death can- 
not be. How natural this doctrine of pre-existence 
to a mind whose intuitions were thus deep and clear I 
The eternal truths were so congenial with it, that their 
lovely aspect seemed the beaming forth of old familiar 
faces ; and when the body was lending its feeblest aid, 
the motions of a life which the body knows not of, 
were as murmurs waxing louder and louder from a 
land already in hearing distance, striking on the soul 
more distinctly as it neared its native heaven — 

" As travelers liear the billows roll before tliey reach the sea." 

The argument which convinced Socrates and Plato, 
seems illogical to us because we use the steps of a 
different syllogism. But, after all, the real ground of 
the argument is one and the same. It is the nature 
of the soul itself as revealed in the consciousness of 
the best minds, its interior alliance with the divinity 
whence come ideas of the Good and the perfect tran- 
scendino^ the knowledo;e of time and sense and all the 
illusions of phenomena ; and the pre-existenc,e and 
post-existence of souls was the form in which they 
affirmed the unchanging Substance amid the billowy 
fluctuations of Time. 

As to the metempsychosis, it has an exoteric and 



THE PL ATOXIC IMMOETALITY. 



369 



esoteric side; or, as we should say, a literal and a 
spiritual sense. The most exterior form of the doc- 
trine, as Plato gives it, Avas doubtless the form in 
which it was popularly apprehended. It is encum- 
bered with far less of philosophical difficulty than 
the Perso-Judean doctrine of the resurrection of the 
flesh, imported by the Christian Fathers into the popu- 
lar Christianity. Wherever vitally received, it must 
have had a most powerful and pervading moral influ- 
ence. Indeed, we know that this was the case. Those 
who received it needed not to send their imaginations 
into another world to evoke the forms of retribution 
against all sin and uncleanness. They had only to 
look down into the animal kingdom, where the hideous 
images of an inverted and degraded humanity were 
reflected back upon them, and where sensuality, sub- 
tlety, cruelty and avarice might see themselves crop- 
ping downward already in the swinish, snakish or 
wolfish visages, where they were to find their indwell- 
ing and incarnation. ^ot the punishment of sin 
merely, but sin in its intrinsic and hateful qualities, 
is here held before the transgressor as in an ever- 
turning mirror where he must always behold his face. 

But further than this, the metempsychosis had a 
humanizing influence, as it established relations be- 
tween man and the animal kingdom which held them 
as partakers of his humanity and immortality. Cru- 
elty toward animals, to which the temptations are 
sore and constant, because these dumb natures can- 
not put their groans and agonies into sj)eech, re- 
ceived an effectual check in the metempsychosis ; for 
it made the whole world of animated nature, down 



370 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



even to the reptile aiici the insect, plead as from 
human eyes for mercy and tenderness. " Thou shalt 
not kill" was a command whose authority extended 
over every species of sentient life, even to the worm 
we tread under our feet.* 

But Pythagoras had his esoteric doctrine — an inte- 
rior range of truth of which the exterior was only 
type and symbol ; and its explication he vouchsafed 
only to the circle within the circles, or to his most in- 
timate disciples. This, of course, has been lost; but 
it is not difficult to imagine from the husk what the 
kernel must have been. I.t must have been the uni- 
versal truth of the twofold nature of man — one celes- 
tial and the other bestial ; the soul of the one immor- 
tal, and always as it rises becoming the more perfect 
image of God ; the other bestial, and when it dom- 
inates the higher nature ch^agging it dowm and shaping 
the whoJe man in the image of the brute and the rep- 
tile. Man, when he yields to sense, approximates to- 
w^ard the animal, and becomes one. His lusts take on 
the disgusting image of the lower natures; he trans- 
migrates into their very forms; he is an immortal 
soul in swinish shape when he gives himself up to 
swinish lusts ; incarnate in the image of the serpent 

^ Botli tlie pre-existence and the metempsychosis have been 
held by many able theologians down even to the present time. 
Origen was tenacious of both doctrines. Some modern theolo- 
gians, well represented by Dr. Edward Beecher, contend that the 
pre-existence is an open question in the interpretation of Chris- 
tianity. Robert Southey, in one of his published letters, regards 
it as " not improbable." Sir Walter Scott says in his Diary that 
at one time he was haunted with a sense of it. Wordsworth sings 
it in his incomparable ode, and Lessing gives into it as a very 
plausible hypothesis. 



THE PLATONIC IMMOPvTALITT. 



371 



if tie descends to serpent wiles. This, we imagine, was 
the inner or spiritual side of the metempsychosis; and 
that, without making animals themselves immortal, it 
made the animal kingdom, through its lowest forms, to 
show the likeness which the soul, immortal as it is, 
may take upon itself, and under which its native and 
celestial glory may be eclipsed and hidden from 
view."^ 

One God, who is both the infinite Good and the in- 
finite Intelligence ; who shaped the Cosmos after his 
models of supreme beauty and excellence; the correla- 
tion of every part of the Cosmos to every other part 
and to the soul that animates the whole ; the intrinsic 
worth and grandeur of the human soul imprinted with 
God's eternal ideas, which immersion in sense may 
smother for a time, but cannot extinguish ; its essen- 
tial immortality; its enjoyment of the Divine wisdom 
and the harmonies of its higher sphere as the reward 
of a just life in the flesh ; its long circuit of expiation 
and punishment as the penalty of injustice and sen- 
suality, — this sums up the Platonic doctrine, cum- 
bered with the pre-existence, with the metempsychosis 
and with dualism, through which the essential truths 
of universal religion are but half concealed. We 
stand here on the summit of the ancient wisdom, with 
the mount of the Christian illumination almost in 
sight. But during the four hundred years between 
Plato and Christ we get no nigher, but sink farther 
away. Platonism developed downward instead of on- 

Herder believed tliat the metempsycliosis liad a spiritual side 
to it, and that its esoteric contents were such as here described. 



372 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



ward and upward — into Gnosticism, where the dual- 
ism is still more hopeless and the chasm between God 
and the world yawns wider and wider, or into Pan- 
theism, where God merges in the world and disappears 
there altogether. 



CHAPTER VII. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

After an exhibition of the essential truths con- 
tained in the ante-Christian religions, and a full appre- 
hension of their convergent tendencies, we may un- 
derstand the catholic spirit of the early Christian 
fathers, those especially of the Alexandrian school. 
The Logos, according to Justin, is the teacher through 
whom all truth comes, whether to the angels of 
heaven or men upon the earth ; and because it has 
its complete manifestation in the Chi'ist, Christianity 
becomes the central point where all the hitherto 
scattered rays of the godlike in humanity converge; 
the absolute religion in which all that has been until 
now fragmentary and rent piecemeal, is brought to- 
gether into a higher unity. Origen says, with even 
more comprehensiveness, "There is but one original 
Divine Reason, the auzoXo-^ot;, through which alone 
the Supreme reveals himself to all other existences." 
Through this all religions have received their measure 
of illumination, obscured and obstructed by clouds ex- 
haled from human depravity and sensualism, to be 
broken in the dissolving light of the coming day. 

From our very brief review we may give a sum- 
mary of the convergent truths of the ante-Christian re- 
ligions, and see how Christianity involves and comple- 
ments them. 

32 373 



374 THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 

1. The life after death, of which this life is prelim- 
inarjj is a doctrine in the utterance of which the other 
religions are remarkably symphonic with the Christian. 
It appears in the Yedas ; it is veiled in the Nirvana 
of Buddha, to be openly proclaimed by his later fol- 
lowers ; it is formulated with great precision by the 
prophet of the Perso-Aryans ; it waxes clearer and 
clearer in the Hellenic religious consciousness, and 
consummates in Plato, w^ho describes the parting of 
the ways under the action of the eternal Justice. It 
is encumbered with fallacies born of sensuous thought, 
with the metempsychosis, with the resurrection of the 
flesh ; but nevertheless is more pronounced than in the 
Hebrew religion, and uttered with deep breathings for 
a more unclouded vision of the Hereafter. 

2. The supremacy of the moral law is avouched in all 
the great religions which have had a history, with the 
enforcement of retributions, both in this life and the 
next ; in a heaven and hell where Right and Wrong 
ripen for their eternal harvest. In the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures these retributions are set forth as mainly tempo- 
ral ; in the Aryan religions they include, with great 
emphasis, the judgments of a spirit-world, and fore- 
shadow, though fitfully and irregularly, the more 
openly pronounced verdict of Christianity. 

3. In the Aryan Religions the sense of the Divine 
gropes ever toward monotheism, though never com- 
ing into the sphere of its open effulgence. Now they 
sink God in nature ; now they sink nature in God ; 
now they put God and nature over against each other 
in irreconcilable contrarieties. They never know him 
as Creator, but as architect and manufacturer out of 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 



375 



material which is a foreign and disturbing element in 
his plans and systems. Nevertheless, the approxima- 
tions toward a pure and consistent monotheism become 
nearer and nearer, till, in the Hellenic religious con- 
sciousness, the Logos doctrine of the Christian gospel 
appears in unmistakable foreshadows. A universal 
and interacting Providence comes often, too, into the 
clearest apprehension and acknowledgment, and gets 
formulated in Plato's " Soul of the World.'' 

4. The unity of the human race, with its essential 
brotherhood and solidarity, appears here and there in 
the flashings of individual*sentiment. But in the re- 
ligion of Buddha it is clearly and strongly pronounced. 
It stands alone, however, divorced from its correlate, 
the essential Fatherhood of God, which gives it in 
Christianity abiding life and working energy. 

5. The inspirations of prophecy and open vision of 
a supersensible world, through the faculty of seership, 
abound in all the other great religions not less than 
the Hebrew and the Christian. They abound through a 
vast compass of higher and lower degrees, and hold the 
common mind to a vivid apprehension of its relations to 
an immortal existence. The other religions have their 
Sadducees, their infidels and materialists ; but the gene- 
ral consciousness never loses its faith in the higher real- 
ities, which avouch themselves by a common influx, 
and by one nearer and stronger, into the mind of 
prophet or seer. In the earlier and ruder stages of 
society this influx is toned and colored by the gross 
sensualism of the minds that receive it. It becomes 
clarified and comes from a higher range of the spirit- 
world, less proximate to sense and less infested Avith 



376 



THE SYMPHOXY OF RELIGIONS. 



sensuous fallacies^ with advancing intelligence and a 
more spiritual worship. Its results are nearest the 
teachings of Christianity in the Hellenic consciousness 
as culminating in its master-minds and at the highest 
point of culture, philosophical and spiritual, which 
the anti-Christian world have ever attained. 

6. The half truths and broken rays of the Aryan 
religions are guides to the Christian gospel, both by 
what they teach and by the want which they awaken 
in the consciousness, but are unable to supply. Hellen- 
ism had an immense influence in preparing the way 
for Christianity. The fathers who did most to formu- 
late the creeds of Christendom, whether of the Jewish 
or Gentile division of the Church, were men vrhose 
dialectical powers had been trained by Greek culture ; 
and to many of them the Platonic religion and phil- 
osoj)hy had given ideals and yearnings, which found 
in the Christ their all-suf&cing fulfillment. For here 
they found, as they believed, the immortal life not 
only announced, but unveiled, and unveiled not from 
the lower and outer ranges of the spirit- world, but 
from its Divine central glories ; certified not only by 
the resurrection of Christ the third day, but by the 
open heavens bending over his Church as a new firma- 
ment, out of which he ever appears as its sun, its 
transforming, guiding and renewing energy. In the 
new influx of power through the mind, heart and will, 
convincing, subduing and creating all things new, 
they found the want supplied which the older relig- 
ions had awakened sometimes to a glowing intensity 
— the want of life from within, by nearer and more 
direct conjunction with the Lord of life himself : " I 



SUMMARY 



AXD COXCLUSIOX. 



377 



have come that ye might have life, and that ye might 
have it more abundantly/^ They found, as they be- 
lieved, in the Christian Kevelation the Divine attri- 
butes, not catalogued philosophically, nor yet inferred 
from the processes of nature and the lofty ideals of 
contemplative minds, but brought forth to view in a 
humanity perfected and made the fullness of the God- 
head bodily. They found the brotherhood of the race 
with its eternal ground and reason in the Fatherhood 
of God — a Fatherhood not given as a speculation, bat 
imao'ed forth in Jesus Christ in all" its atonino; love. 
In Christianity, for the first time, the outlying chaos 
disappears. The Cosmos is not built out of pre-ex- 
istent material, but created. It was created not once 
for all, but is a fresh creation every hour. Sin is dis- 
closed from its deeper fastnesses in the soul. Evil is 
not an external coatino;, adherins; to it from its mate- 
rial adjuncts, to be washed out by lustrations or shelled 
ofP by the metempsychosis; it is internal, spiritual, 
willful, washed out by repentance and regeneration 
through the cleansing Spirit brought nigh in the 
atonement of Christ. The great renewal proceeds, 
not from without inward, but from within outward ; 
and it does not reject nature or the natural life, but 
impletes and glorifies it. 

The aro^ument uro^ed ao;ainst all Iveli2;ion because 
the relio;ions of the world are so conflictino^ and diverse, 
and against Christianity as ranking only with the 
superstitions of the past, loses all its force in the light 
of these investigations. The argument bends its force 
the other v/ay ; the argument from the confluence of 

32 « 



378 



THE SYMPHONY OF EELIGIONS. 



all the great Keligions toward one River of Life that 
flows on for ever^ margined with the eternal Paradise 
of God. Differences about religion are outside mat- 
ters^ temporary, transient, local ; while the primary 
truths have been the same from age to age, only 
breaking from twilight dark into an ever-increasing 
splendor. A spirit-world with its retributions lies so 
near, that they have urged themselves upon the human 
conscience through all forms and modes of faith, in 
accents that wax louder and louder as they come down 
the centuries ; so that the Christian gospel does not 
originate them, but makes an open way for the swell- 
ing volume of their more articulate thunders. Opin- 
ions in religion and disputes about them ! these are 
private matters between you and your neighbor, or 
between one school of theology and another school ex- 
isting onl}^ for to-day. They touch not the catholic 
faith of the world, changing its form, but not its 
essence, and increasing in power and volume as the 
world advances. The prime essentials of that faith 
sweep the chords of our humanity everywhere and 
evermore. We can turn from them and ignore them, 
just as we can stop our ears against the rote of the 
waves which, nevertheless, is the confluent language 
of one mighty sea proclaiming its onward motion for 
ever. There is one voice of the Spirit in the souls 
of men, though many-toned, like the wind sweeping 
through organ keys. It commands the same things, 
denounces the same judgments, breathes the same 
prophecies, misconstrued or muffled by the evils and 
the vices of men, but breaking through them with 
growing loudness and clearness. It forecasts the same 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 379 



fatnre state : first in its lower degrees and outer planes 
of existence ; afterward in tlie higher ones, as men are 
prepared and educated for their disclosures; ascending 
at last to the highest and inmost degree, where the 
Christ on the bosom of the Father brings him forth to 
view, and shows all the planes of being Divine, spirit- 
ual and natural involved in the light of his all-reveal- 
ing glories. 

The oneness and solidarity of the race are manifest 
in this, that the achievements of a single epoch in the 
realm of thought are not for that epoch only, but for 
all that follow. Our obligations are not to Christian- 
ity alone, but to all the provisional religions which 
prepared the way for it, and which it gathers up and 
involves in a higher organic unity — the collective 
mind of the race, as it finds expression in its great 
Religious presses through three distinct stages of relig- 
ious progress. 

In the earlier stage, as found in the cultus of the 
^ Hindus, the divine nature and human nature are 
never found discreted and set over one against the 
other, so as to allow any distinct and sufficing rela- 
tions between them. Either man is lost in God, or 
else God is lost in man. If the Divine side comes to 
its full rights, it absorbs the human; if the human 
side comes to its rights, it absorbs the Divine. In 
Brahminism, God is, but man and nature are not; 
they are only illusory and spectral — an appearance to 
vanish finally in the all-absorbing Divine. In Budd- 
hism man is, but God is not. Where he ought to be, 
there is a silent profound. The Greek religion ran 
the same course as the Hindus, but in an opposite 



380 



THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 



direction. It began where the Hindus left off, for in 
the Greek hero-worship the human side is everything, 
and God is away off in the shadowy unknown, it 
ended where the Hindus began, for in the Pantheism of 
Neoplatonism, God is everything, and man is spectral 
except as part of the Divine, thence to be reabsorbed 
and disappear. Hellenism ended where the Hindus 
began, and there found its grave. 

But in the second order of the great Religions of the 
world, both the Divine and the human side, which 
had been brought each to its rights only in alterna- 
tion, and that one side might abolish the other, are 
set over one against the other simultaneously and in 
sharp antagonism. In the Persian and the Hebrew 
religions alike, the infinite and the finite stand apart 
in their essential difference. ^N^either passes over into 
the other. Not only so ; they stand face to face in 
awful contrast, one in immaculate and dazzling holi- 
ness, the other guilty, self-condemned, liable to be in- 
vaded with avenging thunders, and seeking to placate , 
the Divine wrath with ritual and moral righteousness. 
Their dispensation was a hard one to live under, espe- 
cially for fallible mortals who relapse every day, and 
must be made haggard with fear and consuming re- 
morse. And yet how indispensable is this stage of re- 
ligious development ! Out of the bosom alone of such 
a religion could Christianity appear, for God and man 
must come to their full and true difference before they 
can come to a blissful nnity. Ebionitism, which we 
find sometimes under Christian forms working its way 
to heaven, and working hard, is only the old Judaism 
pushed forward into the cultus of Christianity. 



SUMMARY AXD COXCLUSIOX. 



381 



The third and hio;hest order of Reh'o^ion, and that 
which consummates the others, is that in which God 
and man, having been revealed in their true differ- 
ence, find also their blissful unity. It is the boon of 
Christianity. It is that in which God yields himself 
to our sinful humanity, not toinv^ade it with his thun- 
ders nor scourge it with the Erinnys, but to flood it 
with his cleansing love. It is that consummation of 
the religious experience when we are not any longer 
^' servants,'^ but friends ; when we feel neither our 
sins nor our virtues any more imputed to us, but 
taken up as the burden of an almighty Power, by 
whom we are held trustful as infancy in the maternal 
embrace. This comes not alone when the Divine Jus- 
tice is revealed in the law of Eight that lies hard 
down upon the conscience; not alone when the Divine 
Fatherhood has been declared to us; but when the 
Divine Person has been himself revealed, and the soul 
has been brought into such communion with him that 
his spirit works ever within it states of penitence, hu- 
mility, trust filial and tender, perpetual renewal, de- 
light in learning and doing his will, and an unfailing 
consciousness of the atonino^ love. It is human nature 
brought into conscious harmony with the Divine na- 
ture, which an apostle calls " receiving the atonement.'' 

Here, then, we close the argument pertaining to the 
immortal life. In a re^dew of other religions it takes 
a wider sweep, but comes round with ever cumulative 
force to the Christian gospel, whose foresplendors take 
the place of their foreshadows. While the argument 
adds strength to our faith, it also gives largeness to 



382 



THE SYMPHOXY OF EELIGIOXS. 



our fellowship^ showing how all the great faiths of 
the world have enough in them of the good and true 
to save the people who live under them if they live 
obedient thereto ; how those faiths have been guiding 
and educative for the fruition of the same God and 
the same immortality which the Christ reveals ; so 
that, if not here, jet in the great Hereafter they will 
be symphonic with the songs of the multitude who 
worship "God and the Lamb." The Pythagorean 
conception of the music of the spheres becomes verified 
on a higher and more interior line of thought prob- 
ably than the one which Plato followed; for the orbits 
of the immortal life through which the faithful of all 
climes and ages have moved, and will move for ever, 
are the separate strings of one majestic lyre, each 
sounding a different note of the scale, but all sound- 
ing in unison and making together the rhythmic Hymn 
of the universe. The consciousness of being included 
in this large and goodly fellowship, and our percep- 
tion of its harmonies waxing clearer and clearer with 
our Christian progress, ought to inspire our industries 
in this life with increasing delight, and our faith in 
the next with increasing fervor ; so that we may " lie 
down to the last agony with strength that gives wings 
to rise above it, and pronounce with the last motion 
of the lips a cheerful good-night to the world." 



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